Make healers DPS with four or five healing actions

[Halivel]

Healer DPS needs something. I don't think the job needs to be a DPS that occasionally heals people in terms of what buttons it has (I know that's what it is now once fight mechanics have been optimized), but just some kind of DPS mechanic.

I thought they made a great step in the right direction with the Blood Lily on WHM and the Sage getting Addersting when one of their shields gets broken, plus Kardia. Some kind of interaction between healing and DPS was something I thought had been missing from the game.

Now if they could just add some additional mechanic, it would be about perfect, if you ask me. For example, in World of Warcraft, the Restoration Shaman occasionally gets an instant cast Lava Burst whenever a target suffers damage from their DoT, and Lava Burst itself is guaranteed to crit whenever it strikes a target suffering from the DoT. Something like that would be fun to have.

Blood Lily and Addersting were definitely a step in the right direction. Now the only thing I feel is slightly iffy about them is that unless you're doing harder content (extremes or savage)... well, I barely have any chances to use my Blood Lily in normal dungeons. On dungeons release perhaps, but with overgearing comes the decreased need in healing, and at some point I end up with having three stacks of lilies that I don't need to use unless I decide to overheal in order to get blood lily charged. I funnily feel more pressed in level 50 dungeons where I don't have most strong heals when tanks pulls wall to wall while being undergeared, than I do in level 90 dungeons in the same ciscumstances.

Basically, it feels like there's a bit of a lost potential even with current healing design simply due to how gearing works here.

[Sebazy]

Tanks can SOLO encounters as it is now in casual content. I'm pretty sure a little more healing required isn't going to cause wipes left and right.

Cool, now view this from the perspective of veteran raiding FC healer main, or even just a midcore/casual healer who happens to try hard a bit, has a passing interest in their logs and isn't a habitual overhealer.

What does a little more healing fix for this group of people?

Whilst you're busy laying yourself out at Connor's feet, you're completely forgetting the key point that I've been trying to ram home seemingly forever with regards to this.

Assuming SE don't suddenly roll back the years and revert us back to ARR healing kits, I don't think you realise just how high the healing requirements would have to be tuned to actually change a thing for a competent player that's paying attention. You might be able to catch Jimmy Newhealer with a bit of a spike for sure, but for someone who's ontop of their kit and keys? It's going to take a monumental increase. Literally making normal content deal savage levels of damage, perhaps even more tbh.

Why? Consider this, you say that normal dungeons and ARR hard modes were challenging. Sure they had non telegraphed mini busters and generally a ton more tank damage than we see now, but they arguably had no more raidwides than what we have today. So why were they challenging? Simple, we didn't have a huge overreaching kit full of powerful healing AoEs to delete damage taken. Nor did we have a huge variety of free healing and massive amounts of MP recovery on top in our own kits. Are you forgetting the days of WHM's being utterly reliant on Ballad and Bishop?

Now back to the question: We can't have huge mitigation checks because WHM is a thing that exists so the healing increase would need to be actual HPS pressure spread out over time, not just 1 huge aoe that insta kills if not mitigated correctly right? Fair so far?

Now, lets take Harrowing Hell's initial salvo before the pushback from Savage. If we go with a typical 40k hit after mitigation, then halve it for 4 man content that gives us an approximate AoE that deals ~25k every 2.5 seconds for 15 seconds for the sake of neatness.

So our WHM drops Lilybell, which takes care of ~15k leaving us with 10k

Asylum and Medica II ticks are ~8k, leaving us with 2k a tick.

One additional Rapture takes care of that.

So in that sequence we've spent 2 GCDs out of 6 total healing.

Ok cool, lets do it again so we don't have Lilybell on hand:

Our Asylum and Medica II ticks take care of ~8k leaving 17k a tick to deal with.

That 17k a tick comes to a total of 102k to heal. Lets assume our players have a worst case of 60k HP.

Assize falls in the window, that's 10k gone, our initial cast of Medica II is 6k dealt with. This damage is real, so lets throw a Cure III and Rapture in as well, That's ~25k. Throw PI over the Medica II+Cure III and there's another 10k.

Hey presto, we've survived the mechanic using 3 out of 6 GCDs.

'BUT SEB' I hear you cry, 'You've barely survived it by the skin of your teeth'. Sure, but I'm also not factoring in Crits, Temperance, Asylum's healing buff, party buffs or the good old fashioned trick of throwing extra mitigation such as Benison/Tetra on the squishiest party member (Conveniently yourself assuming all else is equal). I'm also using numbers based in my ilvl 630 gearset to deal with content that's a full tier above what I'm wearing.

The TLDR:

Strip away the savage mechanics around it and the damage isn't nearly as fierce if you're not having to focus on doing a dance at the same time. In meh gear I can deal with that using 3 out of 6 GCDs with the longest cooldown being 90 seconds for asylum. Drop that so I can do this every 60 seconds and maaaaybe we're talking 4 out of 6 GCDs.

To deal with Harrowing Hell Savage sans mechanics/pushback.

Think about that for a moment.

*Edit* I guess what I'm trying to say is that upping the healing requirements a little bit really isn't going to change much of anything.

The healing requirements need to go up dramatically AND our healing kits need to be pruned by fire or very little is going to be felt by anyone beyond the most devout Netflix enjoyer.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm all for it. The day a dungeon Porxie comes down and unleashes a P10S grade Harrowing Hell on my sorry hide is the day I get invested in healing this game again. I'd be all for it. But given SE's form over the last half a decade, I just can't see it happening. At this point I honestly can't see anything changing at all TBH.

[Connor]

snip

Isn’t that viewpoint from the devs the exact reason healers look the way they do now though?

Healer can’t have any higher or difficult healing requirements because they’ll wipe the party - so we have all healing mechanics reduced to simply ‘Press the correct button at the correct time’ (Lilybell / Macrocosmos / W/E). Anything else and the poor newbie healers simply cease to exist entirely and the party wipes unfailingly forever. So, gcd healing is extremely infrequent (so it doesn’t get in the way of ‘right button right time’) unless arguably you’re a White Mage, oGCD healing is extremely over abundant (can’t get confused about which button to press when they’re all the button to press lol), Mp management non-existent. Basically everything around ‘healing’ must, by definition be as easy as humanly possible, because it’s not possible for them ever challenge good healers, and new healers can’t handle…well, anything (apparently).

Then we come to the dps aspect, of course. SE agrees with the sentiment that new healers shouldn’t feel forced to use their damage abilities. Their solution? Remove all but one . Players can’t struggle with knowing how to maximise dps when it’s a single button. And since the healing requirements are going to be taxing them so much already, we wouldn’t want those dps abilities to get in the way of ‘right button right time’. And it even leaves skill expression cuz you can be like 1% better at dps than the other healers by using an ‘ancilliary damage option’ at the right time like Energy Drain, Lord of Crowns, Assize/Afflatus, Phlegma/Toxicon optimisation. Which, clearly are the height of gameplay, thank you for your wisdom SE (that literally nobody ever asked for lol).

But if they increase those dps options, then the new healers are obviously going to get all confused and start spamming DoTs with their eyes turned into swirls like a cartoon. I mean, if we consider the healing abilities the ‘correct’ actions in SE’s eyes, and the ‘dps’ actions as ‘bonus’, their logic relative to newer healers is unfortunately technically accurate. Limiting the amount of bonus actions they can do minimises the likelihood of them not performing the ‘correct’ action, and further steps of ‘bonus action’ are going to confound their understanding of when to use the ‘correct’ one. So, they make the ‘bonus’ as simplistic and reductive as possible (1 DoT 1 filler). Veteran players still have additional offensive actions to optimise to put themselves above the average, which was totally the exact thing they wanted (sarcasm lol, it’s really not).

Basically relative to the design concept, whose main goal is ‘SOS save the new healers’, if we give them extra healing options, somehow they’re going to wipe the party because they don’t know how to play or w/e. If we give them extra dps options, somehow they’re going to wipe the party because they don’t how to play or w/e. So they get an overabundance of ‘correct’ options - half of which they don’t even need - and only the absolute minimum ‘bonus actions’.

Honestly I do kinda think the whole is just a little insulting to ‘new’ healers - are they really just that bad? If we just gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that maybe they’re not going to be super bad from the word ‘go’, I think overall the devs would be much more amenable to expanding non-healing action availability. The sooner we stop making the assumption that a new healer is automatically going to fail for being pushed to heal more, the faster we can start to get more interesting and fun not-healing abilities. That’s what I think, anyway.

Also would like to point out the ‘we’ I’m referring to is the devs/designers not players themselves. Nobody would ever actually ask for… this lol.
Also for further clarity lol, when I say the ‘newer healers’, I think for SE this actually refers to two groups. Literal ‘new’ healers at level 1-89, but also ‘new endgame healers’ who have just hit 90

[Sebazy]

Honestly I do kinda think the whole is just a little insulting to ‘new’ healers - are they really just that bad?

The ultimate irony of it all is that the content an actual new healer is chewing through is significantly rougher than the content that awaits them once they hit the start of the endgame.

You go from fairly rough leveling dungeons that require you to keep a tab on peoples health to your first alliance raid where you suddenly find yourself with nothing to do except die to mechanics as you learn the game's nuances and quirks.

It feels like SE just want the game as a whole to be as inclusive and accessible as possible even if it's to the detriment of long term players and try hards. It's just that they've taken this to such an extreme that IMO it's incentivising a standard of play where you barely even bother paying attention to the primary monitor.

[Connor]

The ultimate irony of it all is that the content an actual new healer is chewing through is significantly rougher than the content that awaits them once they hit the start of the endgame.

You go from fairly rough leveling dungeons that require you to keep a tab on peoples health to your first alliance raid where you suddenly find yourself with nothing to do except die to mechanics as you learn the game's nuances and quirks.

It feels like SE just want the game as a whole to be as inclusive and accessible as possible even if it's to the detriment of long term players and try hards. It's just that they've taken this to such an extreme that IMO it's incentivising a standard of play where you barely even bother paying attention to the primary monitor.

Yeah, it’s definitely bizarre that even just by way of having less oGCDs, newer healers are actually going to be more actively involved in healing than veteran players.

With any game, you kind of expect difficulty to be like stairs. You start at the bottom and move your way up, with things getting that little bit more difficult/complex as you progress.
Then you get to FFXIV and you start at the top of an escalator going downwards lol. You’re gradually moved away from the complexity and difficulty the further you progress, and you don’t even have any control over it. Then once you hit 90, are fully geared - at the bottom of the escalator, so to speak - you’re left with nowhere else to go.

They practically reversed the basic logic of difficulty scaling in video games with healer design lol; things get easier the further you progress, not harder

[Renathras]

Yeah, it’s definitely bizarre that even just by way of having less oGCDs, newer healers are actually going to be more actively involved in healing than veteran players.

Which is why I think cutting down the oGCD proliferation and power is one of the things we need to do.

The people most opposed to that, however, are the people who like healing plans and the people who like DPSing with healing being oGCDs they weave between damage GCDs.

I do agree that it's pretty backwards in terms of the leveling. Ala Mhigo is one of the roughest instances in the game.

[Hyperia]

Which is why I think cutting down the oGCD proliferation and power is one of the things we need to do.

The people most opposed to that, however, are the people who like healing plans and the people who like DPSing with healing being oGCDs they weave between damage GCDs.

I do agree that it's pretty backwards in terms of the leveling. Ala Mhigo is one of the roughest instances in the game.

I just watched a WHM clear P12S and all they did was Glare/Dia spam with the only heals they used being cast just to get the blood lily for dps and assize. Other than that, they were full on DPS with no healing. oGCD heals are kinda broken right now on how powerful they are. I wish they would make a decision if they really want to keep GCD spells or just get rid of them and have all oGCD spam with individual CDs.

[PetThisMiqo]

Healing is fine and the only complaints are coming from the vocal dissatisfied minority. If you don't enjoy the game as it is now then you need to leave.

[Darkobra]

Healing is fine and the only complaints are coming from the vocal dissatisfied minority. If you don't enjoy the game as it is now then you need to leave.

You did leave. I made it happen. You tried it against me. I'm too connected.

What's your next game?

[Banriikku]

Healing in FF14 works as follows : enough or not enough.
There is no bonus or need to heal more then the amount needed to survive. For this reason there is no need for GCD healing except certain special cases.
In short: FF14 Healers are desigend like there is random damage spikes and outburst, while the fight are desigend like a dance with no random damage.
One of the two need to change. So NO, giving more buttons, healing or dps, will not solve the problem or reduce it.

For me personal the change to more encounter randomness would be nice to make encounter less a memory game and more a way to show your skills but i can already hear the screams "REEEEEEEEEE, all healers will leave, REEEEEEEE, healers are hard, REEEE". This kind of argument is a non-existent one because first, MSQ will stay easy and aproachable with no problems or concerns. Secondly, only thing that will be reintrudced will the "skill ceiling" that got reduced and almost deleted for the sake of easy access without providing these advantages. Yes the healing at the moment is not better or easier, its just stale and repetitive. My arument is the skill floor did not change only the skill ceilling by almost obliterating it.

We need to accept that skill ceiling and skilll floor gameplay is diffrent and not a problem. I play extreme and savage and dipped my toe into ultimates and my wife plays only "the roulette healer". Its roulette and thats okay, no player is frustrated or angered about others beeing way better in an expert or alliance roulette. The devs need to accept also : THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A META. I swear, outthere on steam, is a "flower picking simulator" and i bet my kuponuts on it, there is A META for it!! Instead of fighting the meta, control and embrace it but stop believing you could stop it. Also stop believing you could change "mean people" there will alway be such "special ones", so please moderate and let it be done.

But SE will need to fail harder to make changes to the healers or the other points. They need to suffer and get the problems hammered home with a nuke... there are soo many problems and wishes of the playerbase the dev team and the management is not aware of even after LL's and Fanfest.... its almost comical.