The game does a terrible job to teach new players how to heal.

[Icecylee]

It's not just bad at teaching new players how to heal, it's pretty bad at teaching you how to play the game at all, regardless of role. I don't think it at any point even explains the difference between a GCD and oGCD, which is a majorly important core part of the mechanics...

[Nizzi]

I am doing mentor roulettes, and i ever so often get healers in my dungeon group that do no damage at all, they just stand around and do nothing or keep producing overheal despite no one taking damage.

I don't understand how it is not obvious that a healer also has to do damage if there is nothing to heal, especially on dungeon bosses.

That's exactly how they want the role played lmao, even in Endwalker Yoshida has said they don't see them ever adding more DPS abilities to healers because they don't want new healers to see more than 2 buttons and go "oh do i have to do damage while healing?"

[Katish]

That's exactly how they want the role played lmao, even in Endwalker Yoshida has said they don't see them ever adding more DPS abilities to healers because they don't want new healers to see more than 2 buttons and go "oh do i have to do damage while healing?"

The funny thing is from some of my typical experiences with healers that only know healing, is this has had the opposite effect in terms of survivability. Since the healer is only healing, the monsters in a trash pull last longer thus require even more healing to be done which then translates to less mana for the healer just spamming healing...and eventually resulting in a wipe if the tank is not self-sufficient (or are new to tanking) because the healer had been mismanaging mana and the monsters lingering had continuously continued their onslaught. (So not only does it take longer for the dps to slim the mob down, it isn't free from the consequence of wiping lel.)

[Sebazy]

What particular MMORPGs have you all played recently that provides anything beyond the basics of any single job? World of Warcraft was no different. Guild Wars 2 didn't provide anything, nor Rift, nor TESO, nor SW:TOR, nor ...

I'd argue that WoW and SW:Tor pressured the player to pay attention to their kit with the PvP focus as well as mainstream dungeon content that wasn't a complete faceroll. Whilst not everyone played to a high standard, I don't remember seeing anything like as poor a baseline standard in WoW or SW:TOR as I routinely encounter in FFXIV. FFXIV actively rewards players who do little beyond mopping the floor with their face. Neither WoW nor SW:TOR tolerated that kind of dead weight beyond the first few zones at least back when I played them.

[Raikai]

Honestly, watching my boyfriend try to get into the game made me realize that they do a terrible job explaining everything that is related to advanced combat.

We still don't see an explanation that abilities are not considered healing magic (for healers) thus they don't benefit from some effects

The concept of weaving and clipping won't come naturally for some people

The job structure relies on the 2minute meta, and there's nothing ingame that indicates the importance of this

[Supersnow845]

The game is terrible at explanations but honestly what is the point

I just got out of a run of MONASTERY where my cohealer would walk into the arena pick a random spot in the arena and spam succor, succor succor succor nothing but succor even when nobody was in range to get hit by it, they moved around enough and erratically enough that you could tell they weren’t a bot

This person was actively getting white knighted by our party because they could see succor casts going out so they assumed I was the one not helping even though at TGC they were standing with alliance a when we were c

If you can get away with this kinda stuff and hey actively supported by the party what incentive to people have to bother to interact with any learning system, no matter how well designed it is, and this is entirely squares fault for making content clearable by straight leaches like this

Until square reverses the decision to make everything pre WOL clearable with half the party actually being asleep (which they never will) attempting to make people learn beyond what they themselves feel is a skill level they are happy with is completely pointless

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

In-game explanation is terrible, yes. But it’s not the only playing factor. Look no further than RDM whose starting job quest literally screams “Here’s how you play the job!” but occasionally we still see Jolt Mages, Hardcaster RDMs, or heavens forfend the fake melee RDMs running around.

The game doesn’t wall these healers for playing badly. Fail a solo duty? No worries! We got the Very Easy Mode for you!

Insecure of playing together with other player in MMO? No worries! We got duty support/trust system!

Cannot use duty support cause the trial doesn’t support it? No worries! Second healer, WAR, & PLD will carry you… hopefully! You can warm the floor to your heart’s content!

Not to mention the general fear of getting strike to your account—when was the last time we read somebody in party say something like “Hey <player>, do you know that using X is less beneficial vs using Y?”, and how many times that went well, ignored, or worse being seen as an ‘attack against the poor sprout’?

[ty_taurus]

The beginner experience is also not very friendly with the healer role either. White Mage is the only healer the player can choose during character creation since Arcanist is a DPS, and White Mage has a miserable selection of actions early on and is painfully shallow for an incredibly long time. It does not offer tools that are helpful for a new player to get comfortable until said new players would likely have already finished developing whatever habits they get comfortable with. Scholar will give a new player whiplash since the transition from Arcanist to Scholar doesn't make any sense anymore. And both Astrologian and Sage can't be accessed for a very long time.

I can't even imagine playing it from scratch in today's age where you're stuck with Stone, Aero, Cure, Medica and Raise until level 30.

[ForsakenRoe]

Ideally they'd have split SMN off to be it's own job that you unlock at level 30, and reworked ACN into a healer that evolves up into SCH. That way, there's two healers to choose from at the start of the game instead of just one, the Carbuncle would offer newer healers a bit of a safety net (being as it'd be attached to a healer class it'd have 'embrace but weaker' as it's 'autoattack'), makes more sense to me that ACN, a class about using maths to create magic effects, would evolve into 'Sun Tzu style battle tactics healer', rather than 'bind the essence of a primal into a smaller, more controllable form'. Plus, SCH job quests are in La Noscea like ACN is, SMN goes off to Gridania

Of course, that (reworking ACN to be a healer) is more effort than what they did, so instead they did what they did.

Unrelated, while the Hall of the Novice tells you some basic stuff, A: it's not exactly kept up to date with how the game's evolved, and B: IIRC it's actually entirely skippable. Oh and C: the majority of this playerbase does not like being told they're 'wrong' or 'bad' so they never want to accept any advice, even from the game itself. I wonder, does SE have data on 'how many times have people failed a solo instance because they didn't do what the NPCs told them to do, multiple times', like when Alisaie is going 'give me aether for my stupid flashy finisher move' and the player just carries on hitting stuff (3.4 solo instance vs the WODs comes to mind)

[Raikai]

Ideally they'd have split SMN off to be it's own job that you unlock at level 30, and reworked ACN into a healer that evolves up into SCH. That way, there's two healers to choose from at the start of the game instead of just one, the Carbuncle would offer newer healers a bit of a safety net (being as it'd be attached to a healer class it'd have 'embrace but weaker' as it's 'autoattack'), makes more sense to me that ACN, a class about using maths to create magic effects, would evolve into 'Sun Tzu style battle tactics healer', rather than 'bind the essence of a primal into a smaller, more controllable form'. Plus, SCH job quests are in La Noscea like ACN is, SMN goes off to Gridania

Of course, that (reworking ACN to be a healer) is more effort than what they did, so instead they did what they did.

Unrelated, while the Hall of the Novice tells you some basic stuff, A: it's not exactly kept up to date with how the game's evolved, and B: IIRC it's actually entirely skippable. Oh and C: the majority of this playerbase does not like being told they're 'wrong' or 'bad' so they never want to accept any advice, even from the game itself. I wonder, does SE have data on 'how many times have people failed a solo instance because they didn't do what the NPCs told them to do, multiple times', like when Alisaie is going 'give me aether for my stupid flashy finisher move' and the player just carries on hitting stuff (3.4 solo instance vs the WODs comes to mind)

On a practical level I think it would be better to create a brand new class for SCH (Academician maybe? Old Aphy class), just because it's less work since ACN already uses a lot of SMN assets, plus there are the quests with egi and everything that would need to be rewritten.

But then I get to think if they even care about classes to that extent nowadays, especially because they have plans of making a new 'starting point' at Endwalker patches. If they ever separate SCH and SMN, what I'd predict they would do is just letting SCH be a standalone job that anyone can pick up at 30 like AST.