Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

[vetch]

It would still need to be a substantial amounts of encoutners early on because you need to build that mindset early on. ... So with just saying starting from Dawntrail, imagine going 90 levels of lets say 80 percent dps and 20 percent healing and now they suddenly switch it up. This would likely lead to the same thing that we had happen in 6.2 and 6.3.

A substantial number of early encounters are already harder to heal than ShB/EW content. Stone Vigil was so rough that they removed mob packs during the Duty Support rework, and it's still incredibly hard to do the full first pull. Nabriales can still melt an undergeared tank during Triple. Ser Charibert used to wipe groups. If you want to make healing harder early on to set expectations, tighten the ilevel syncs in 1-60 content to a little above their min ilvl and half the work is done. There's a 200-hour healing tutorial for you, unlocked with the tiniest mote of developer effort.

In contrast, even the leveling dungeons in Endwalker, which are usually more fun to heal than levelcaps in any other expansion, have been so walled-in and on-rails, with unremarkable trash and DDR instadeath-gotcha bossfights and the surfeit of free heals spilling over onto the tanks, that casually healing for fun is the worst it has ever been. The actual design rot has gotten bad only quite recently.

[Maltothoris]

Well for one I was been here since 2.1 and I remember when the hw dungeons were even harder before they nerfed them. And it shows that its too dependant on variables of under geared tanks and people not knowing the fights.

[ty_taurus]

At the same time though, I never felt like dungeons were an obstacle in HW. Like, to me, "too hard" is people not being able to clear it or losing patients after several wipes, which I never saw happen. You get the occasional wipe or two, but I see that now anyway. Granted I was the healer back then, but I never heard of any of my FC mates or anyone timing out of a dungeon or having to leave the dungeon because they couldn't beat the boss.

[Shurrikhan]

A substantial number of early encounters are already harder to heal than ShB/EW content. Stone Vigil was so rough that they removed mob packs during the Duty Support rework, and it's still incredibly hard to do the full first pull. Nabriales can still melt an undergeared tank during Triple. Ser Charibert used to wipe groups. If you want to make healing harder early on to set expectations, tighten the ilevel syncs in 1-60 content to a little above their min ilvl and half the work is done. There's a 200-hour healing tutorial for you, unlocked with the tiniest mote of developer effort.

This. I'd argue there's no need for such a surfeit of ilvl in general, as weekly tome (and Savage) gear is ultimately just meant to slowly nerf Savage's (later) floors (as a sort of participation reward for at least getting what floors per week that one can) and really does not need to make a joke of all other content.

There are other efforts we could make to improve the healing itself, but we may as well start with just that. It costs all of a minute of developer work.

At the same time though, I never felt like dungeons were an obstacle in HW.

To be fair, 2.0 to 2.1, 2.15 to 2.55, and 3.x are all pretty distinct in terms of dungeon difficulty.

2.0 to 2.1 had rapidly increasing difficulty with each new endgame dungeon (WP -> AK -> PS). 2.15 to 2.55 hugely mellowed that out, but still included interesting environmental mechanics and more novel of boss encounters. HW was when we removed CC and started building almost all trash around wall-to-wall pulls.

[Connor]

There\\\\'s been a trend across the healer forums of considering how we could replace percentile damage buffs (and buffs that are essentially percentile damage buffs) on the basis of their being dull or difficult to balance with other options.

I have noticed it too, and I also disagree about them being dull. Chain Stratagem is one of the only things that makes it feels like I’m actually doing something valuable for the party and not just throwing a bunch of fireballs, even if it just copium lol.

When it comes to balancing I do get that any kind of ‘damage increase’ becomes difficult to balance. At the same time though don’t they kind of resolve that issue with Bard’s songs? They grant a support effect with 100% uptime, but that uptime is balanced by the super small increase values and being on substats rather than direct damage. Ultimately, through those buffs alone Bard adds a fair amount of damage over the course of a full fight with those buffs. I mean, look at how strong they were in Stormblood when they were 3% crit increase (though that was critical’s fault too lol).

Same. I say all this largely in interest of that.

Yeah; I would much prefer a supportive/tactical healer, but at the same time I get that others don’t prefer that style, so I think diversifying healers is ultimately going to be the most ‘utilitarian’ option. And we already have things like some healers being slightly more rDPS oriented whilst the others are more personal dps oriented. So they’d just be developing what they’ve started further by diversifying them more, like giving Sage/White Mage more varied ways to dps that differentiate them from each other.

Likewise, same. I do think, though, if any healer were to be a bit more focused around team-dynamics-aware buffing, it would be AST.

Yeah, it does overall make more sense for Astrologian to be the ‘true support’ healer rather than Scholar. I mean, it’s exactly what it’s been advertised as this whole time. Plus it’s already built around buffing the party.

Wanting Scholar to be more ‘supportive’ is just a personal preference since it’s my main and I like supporting so my brain is like ‘let’s put the two together’ lol.
Though I do think there’s a case for Scholar to be more of a ‘supportive’ role (* huffs copium and repeatedly has Alka Zolka remind him Scholar’s mostly take a supporting role in battle *) but I’m aware it’s mostly personal bias and not what’s actually logical. Particularly if you read the next part where Alka Zolka essentially says ‘that’s not all they’re good at…’ lol.

[ForsakenRoe]

that casually healing for fun is the worst it has ever been. The actual design rot has gotten bad only quite recently.

We could make every dungeon be 'Bardam's first pull, with a full regular-Shire tank' like SB launch, I'd be down for that

[Payadopa]

I never understood why OGCD heals require no MP and are instant and GCDs the opposite. If anything OGCDs should cost way more or GCDs and OGCDs should be swapped or redistributed.

But then again I also don't get the need to make everything DPS. First they remove every RPG element under the sun, then struggle to balance the DPS values against one another and in the end make all jobs play the same. Like, aren't you supposed to design a game as a game designer? You cannot tell me that you didn't foresee the sorry state of affairs we have now.

[Aldath]

Increasing DPS variety is far more beneficial then adjusting all encounters to require more healing.

-Solo content that requires DPS would be improved
-Healing downtime interaction would be improved
-Situations where your party is overgeared, better skilled or both would be improved
-Healer combinations that reduce the need to heal as much (or in some cases not at all *cough24mancough*) would be improved

They'd need to redesign 10 years of content to make that work. We're at a point where healing also isn't needed not only because of the reasons already stated, but because things melt down so fast and deal so little damage that your services are rarely needed in normal most content, and I'm not taking only about old one, new stuff also melts and tickles. Adjust healer kit for having more dps variety and then you're just playing a gimped RDPS/Caster and encounters would give your even less time to do Healer stuff. It's either that or reducing overall Healer Dps further and spread it towards more buttons to make the class feel busier while achieving nothing but more button bloat.

They cornered themselves with current Healer design and I wouldn't be surprised if they gutted them because that solution was faster than adjusting content.

[Hyperia]

As it stands now, nearly all essential healing can be done by other jobs besides healers. They really do not know what to do with healers, this is the core problem. Once I saw Savage and Ultimate get cleared with no healers, I knew the entire system is completely broken and in need of a major rework, but we all know that won’t happen.

Sooo… look forward to more healing Warriors, etc. I want to heal more but we have 10 years of content to show that we are needed less and less. I can see the day when tanks and healers are gone, replaced with specific actions in all DPS jobs. Sad day that will be, sad day.

[Teno]

It would be way easier + cheaper to just inc the damage output of the bosses.
=> just add a x% inc to autoatk + skill dmg on bosses on every content, make raidwides go off more often..ect..

Talk like you've got absolutely 0 clue how the game works.