Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

[Ririta]

Neuter healing, make healers into DPS with 4-5 healing actions and 4-5 support actions. It'll suddenly be 500% more engaging and you actually need to think about healing again, plus you now have a fun rotation in casual content where none of that matters.

I don't know if you're baiting but you basically described ARR scholar.

[Troxbark]

And give DPS and tanks massively buffed self healing

Just ask to remove healers then, why even beat around the bush lmao.

[Rithy255]

Unless they redesign combat from the ground up, DPS focus is the only thing that works in FFXIV. Tanks are already simply DPS with a couple damage mitigation actions and an aggro mode toggle.
Healer design is hot trash because they keep trying to give them excessive healing actions in a game that THEY turned into something that will never need it as far back as 2.0.

That's the issue though Healers kits are so bloated that it's never a choice between "dps or heal" it's both.

In general theirs many ways to actually fix healers kits to be more healing focused without drastically changing fights too much... also I don't think we should be looking behind to old content and trying to fix healer at this point for old content, Old content already isn't fun.

I actually do think they need to rework combat and healing & tanking to a degree, if they want the best player experience for those job types. All you would really need to add is more frequent small bursts of damage throughout fights, more aoe attacks ect, rougher autos, even on easier content this would by far make healers more engaging and fun, They dont need to change current fights or anything, they should focuse on the next expansion being a new starting point for all jobs, they should focus on taking more risks in general instead of playing it safe and copying shadowbringers style of combat.

Healers are clearly not fine as they are but making them "green dps" isn't the correct solution, I agree that healers to a certain degree should get a few more damage spells, but they need to look at healing, theirs so many ways it can be improved uppon and I personally don't think you need a complete redesign going into a new expansion, they need to cutdown on healing buttons while adding more general damage in future fights.

It's never a solution as "oh add this and healer is fine" It's multiple layers to healers core design that needs to be looked at, Slapping DPS buttons and full rotations on healers, not bothering to look into anything else, will not fix healer to be more fun or appealing to healer players, but adding extra damage buttons ontop of trying to improve how healing works in ff14 seems like the best way to go.

I can only imagine healers and tanks will likely get easier though in dawn trail with the way "balance" likes to be less and less about actually fixing anything and just making everything different flavours of each other.

[Noumenon]

I mean, I'd say Macrocosmos and Haima/Panhaima are far more interesting ways to heal than just Helios or Eukrasian Prognosis. I like the ideas of new heals, but I'd want them to just replace the old boring ones instead.

Macrocosmos? The thing that can straight up delete several healing checks altogether, making it require absolutely zero effort?

Yes that's interesting in the way pressing an "I win" button is interesting.

[ZenoDiogenes]

What do you propose healers do when they don't have anything to heal? Solo content/downtime/casual content etc.

Obviously, they need to keep the DPS spells to do solo content, but make them insignificant for DPS checks while raiding.
The game should put you in a position where you have to reactively or predictively decide how you apply your heal kit on every GCD or OGCD.

In essence, I would rather be busy healing my group back up as filler than throwing a bunch of glares at the boss.
It ruins the job fantasy for me.

[Noumenon]

The game should put you in a position where you have to reactively or predictively decide how you apply your heal kit on every GCD or OGCD.

Never going to happen because they require Second Life keyboard-fumblers to get through everything under Extreme.

[ty_taurus]

Macrocosmos? The thing that can straight up delete several healing checks altogether, making it require absolutely zero effort?

Yes that's interesting in the way pressing an "I win" button is interesting.

Even if the execution is flawed, that doesn't mean it isn't interesting. It's not like your only options are destroy it or leave it as is.

[Maltothoris]

Obviously, they need to keep the DPS spells to do solo content, but make them insignificant for DPS checks while raiding.
The game should put you in a position where you have to reactively or predictively decide how you apply your heal kit on every GCD or OGCD.

In essence, I would rather be busy healing my group back up as filler than throwing a bunch of glares at the boss.
It ruins the job fantasy for me.

Well the thing is everything in this game is predictable. It's hardly every reactive. For one, fights are scripted and damage is scripted. Two, they've got on record for saying they don't want the healing to be too overwhelming for new players. This basically puts in a hard place because you have veterans clamoring for years for higher heal checks. heck we even gotten higher checks for Abyssos and look what happened. We had a healer shortage for the duration of that tier before they went easier for this tier.

[TheDustyOne]

The game should put you in a position where you have to reactively or predictively decide how you apply your heal kit on every GCD or OGCD.

Yeah, this can't happen, at all, not even in Ultimate.

The amount of incoming damage needed for that would put so much strain on the average player that we'd have to force tanks and DPS to pick up the slack and also get them to perfectly mitigate and use their healing just to give the healers some room. What then happens if a healer slips up and casts the "wrong" healing GCD? Does most of the group suddenly drop dead because you used a single target heal instead of AoE? If there is some leeway to let you have a mistake or two, congratulations, you've now given a potential window to let us DPS again.

No MMO allows for healing to be THAT strict.

If the end result is just that you want healer DPS to never matter in a fight, such that you can beat enrage without casting a single DPS spell, well that still won't work because healers that do DPS still finish the fight faster, which in turn skips dangerous mechanics, which further negates the need to heal, and people don't appreciate having a team member who sits there near-afk for most of the fight because health bars were full. If you just want the DPS spells to be so negligible in content, then you in-turn make them useless in solo content as well unless you intentionally set healer-only rules like a solo-only buff. All this does is completely negate a playstyle that many enjoy (being able to risk doing damage as a healer to help finish a fight faster) to make another preferred playstyle the ONLY playstyle (hEaLeRs OnLy HeAl), when currently, outside high-end content, you can already do the latter without infringing on the former. We could have 50 extra DPS spells and it still wouldn't matter in casual content if you only ever wanted to heal.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Yeah, this can't happen, at all, not even in Ultimate.

The amount of incoming damage needed for that would put so much strain on the average player that we'd have to force tanks and DPS to pick up the slack and also get them to perfectly mitigate and use their healing just to give the healers some room. What then happens if a healer slips up and casts the "wrong" healing GCD? Does most of the group suddenly drop dead because you used a single target heal instead of AoE? If there is some leeway to let you have a mistake or two, congratulations, you've now given a potential window to let us DPS again.

No MMO allows for healing to be THAT strict.

If the end result is just that you want healer DPS to never matter in a fight, such that you can beat enrage without casting a single DPS spell, well that still won't work because healers that do DPS still finish the fight faster, which in turn skips dangerous mechanics, which further negates the need to heal, and people don't appreciate having a team member who sits there near-afk for most of the fight because health bars were full. If you just want the DPS spells to be so negligible in content, then you in-turn make them useless in solo content as well unless you intentionally set healer-only rules like a solo-only buff. All this does is completely negate a playstyle that many enjoy (being able to risk doing damage as a healer to help finish a fight faster) to make another preferred playstyle the ONLY playstyle (hEaLeRs OnLy HeAl), when currently, outside high-end content, you can already do the latter without infringing on the former. We could have 50 extra DPS spells and it still wouldn't matter in casual content if you only ever wanted to heal.

Actually had plenty of times in older mmos where damage output was so high I had no time to do anything other than various heals, defensive buffs, and cleanses. But I agree combat hasn’t been designed for challenging healing here.