Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[AmiableApkallu]

I'm not so unsure. They don't have a dedicated healer designer, and I'm genuinely curious- usually when a new role is created, it's featured as the face of the expansion. Sometimes it's one, sometimes more than one at a time- but has it ever been a healer? Because I really doubt it, and I believe that it is because the role takes just that place in Square's minds.

To suffer from Main Character Syndrome, you need to be able to bring about victory over the enemy.

Unfortunately, healers in this game are portrayed and designed to delay defeat at the enemy's hands. (Paraphrasing Semirhage.)

[ty_taurus]

It has never been a healer, and likely never will be. It's never been a caster either. I think they find it easier to animate a melee/tank in a trailer in such a way that gets people more excited than a caster would. Calling it now, next expansion he'll be a MCH (since Thancred is a GNB, he can't double up on that). NIN could be an option too, but dual wield right after Viper? Probably best to give it a gap. It's not like 'healer protagonist in trailer' can't work, Blizzard did a pretty good job of it IMO with Anduin in the BFA trailer. Just have the WOL as an AST, recolour the light dome in that video blue and add some stars to it, job done

I disagree. Casters also feature a weapon that can be revealed, and magic is something that can look extremely cool and flashy. Sage’s reveal with Alphinaud was infinitely more dynamic and interesting than “and now he has two swords.” And Alisaie’s showcase was also very exciting.

It just has more to do with melee favoritism. They like melee, and they only see the WoL as a melee user. Also, they did have the WoL dawn the monk job alongside Lyse who was the focal point of the same expansion. They can easily pair WoL with a main character of an existing job if they want to.

EDIT: Fixed it to say monk. Not sure how that got spellchecked to "kink" but oh well.

[fulminating]

Louisoux has probably looked the most impressive in the cgi scenes, but even he stopped being a caster and ended up punching the dragon in the full coil rendition.

Besides that, paladin and dark knight both are magic users, even if caster stretches it somewhat. It is pretty telling that their magic aspects (lights inside worm, cutting the forgiven whatsit in half) are more being used as a way to hype up a delayed full reveal of the poster boy rather than as a flashy fighting technique.

I don’t think it should be impossible to have a caster or even healer as the poster job, but it would be a struggle to overcome the disadvantages of demographic targeting, typical lack of dynamic combat and fitting the generally heroic aesthetic they’re using for him. DT was a good opportunity to have turtlemancer as the poster job and viper the secondary, to emphasise it being a new start and broadly lower stakes but that’s a bit meta possibly.
I would probably enjoy watching the poster guy cackling and dropping an ungodly pyrotechnics display on something, but I can’t really imagine it being that exciting to watch the character without gratuitous use of between the lines and aetherial manipulation. Healing on the other hand would be possibly a bit gory to have in any exciting capacity, although that wow one where the dude brings the guys back would be a good base, if less impressive given the smaller scale of ff14 raids. Maybe put an alliance raid in the trailer and have healer lb3s hit the other parties as an expansion feature? I don’t think the healer aesthetics play well for this - white mage is kind of out because it always has to look like a white mage, sage is taken, scholar has faeries and skirts which probably would look a bit odd on the poster guy and ast is also taken and doesn’t have particularly dynamic outfits either. Warrior is probably as near as we’re going to get.

[OgruMogru]

It's because healers are the trophy girlfriend role. Milky and passive. You're accessories, not the main focus.

This is sarcasm but it's not because it's the way healers have been largely presented and treated for years. Decades.

[IDontPetLalas]

It's because healers are the trophy girlfriend role. Milky and passive. You're accessories, not the main focus.

This is sarcasm but it's not because it's the way healers have been largely presented and treated for years. Decades.

This made me laugh entirely too much (despite the elements of truth), because of thinking of the first time I heard various healers on VC and how shocked various people were when they turned out to be guys. One of my best friends used to rant at me all the time about how he always had to say "yes, I'm a guy"

[ForsakenRoe]

Besides that, paladin and dark knight both are magic users, even if caster stretches it somewhat. It is pretty telling that their magic aspects (lights inside worm, cutting the forgiven whatsit in half) are more being used as a way to hype up a delayed full reveal of the poster boy rather than as a flashy fighting technique.

Yeh, that's what I'm thinking, when it IS magic related by tangent like PLD, DRK, and to an extent RDM has it too, it's a melee weapon being used as the method by which the magic is being delivered. DRK using Shadowbringer an expansion early, PLD slashing a terminus worm in half with light. Alph and the SGE nouliths breaks the mould very well, but I wonder how much that's because the weapon itself breaks the mould in it's design. That, and/or the 'we have been waiting for a healer for 6 years now, we'll take anything we can get' factor. On which note, I'm still pissed they replace the animation from the trailer (Toxikon 1) with a completely different, and in my opinion worse, one. Make Toxikon 1 and 2 have different coloured lasers in Tox2's animation, and move Tox1's animation over to Phlegma. Delete the big blue ball. Or make a 'Eukrasian Phlegma' that uses the blue ball animation, and is an AOE DOT applicator

Anyway, that's why I think it'll be more physical stuff for now, until they have some new casters (and weapon archetypes) to work with. Though, with the redesign and how much 'spectacle' there is to it, I guess SMN could work. Actually, what's the roles for 8.0, physranged and a tank, right? Then it can be the new tank there, I suppose

[Renathras]

This isn't a one problem issue though, it's several problems across the board.

I agree wholeheartedly.

It's one of the reasons I'm so adamantly opposed to the "just some more DPS buttons" solution, since it really isn't one. There are solutions that don't involve adding more DPS buttons, some that do, and some that mix (add some for some healer Jobs but not others). But only adding DPS buttons will never fix the problem. The only way it could come close is just making this into an ARPG where every Job has its own self-sustain and every Job is a DPS with no healers and tanks anymore, but that isn't happening and would alienate far more people anyway.

Outside of that, any realistic solution must address encounter design first and foremost, since that's where a large portion of the problem derives from. Secondarily to that, all Job kits - not just healers - in terms of things like sustain, mitigation, and healing that trivializes healing content in general (admittedly, this would be less of a problem after the encounter design is addressed). As part of that, healer kits in terms of healing potencies, oGCD proliferation, and mechanics (like MP management) need to be addressed.

[Note, this doesn't necessitate removing all sustain or agency from other Jobs. But it does mean having a more impactful decision making process. Contrast Clemency (a very clear DPS loss and a GCD action - which USED to break combos) with Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting/Nascent Flash, which is a short CD, fire and forget, and allows (requires, actually) continuing the damage rotation. There is no cost or trade-off, making it a no-brainer move. Likewise, Vercure vs Curing Waltz. Vercure is a clear DPS loss (outside of using it in downtime to prep a Dualcast), and while it's a respectable heal (2x Vercure ~= 1x Cure 2), it's also single target AND it will break your melee/magic burst combo. (Same with Verraise). This generates a situation where the RDM isn't able to act as a general party healer/healer replacement, but can do spot healing and personal sustain in a pinch. But it's a trade-off. It can DPS or it can heal, it can't do both at once, and in some cases, doing the healing can majorly cut into or damage its damage potential. This means it's an interesting option, but it doesn't replace a healer. Contrast Curing Waltz or Everlasting Flight (less so the latter since it's locked into the rotation, moreso the former since it can be placed anywhere), which is not only a strong heal (3/4ths of a Medica 1), but also AOE, doubled with the Dance Partner (600 total potency, this is Cure 3 level of healing), and is an oGCD weave. While it cannot be spammed, it can be used at key points in 4 mans to negate the need for a healer in the party, on a short 60 sec CD (on par with Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing, etc), and more importantly, comes at no opportunity cost to the DNC. It is weaved within the rotation and does not require any sacrifice of damage, mobility, etc to utilize.

The important thing to note here are the things with opportunity costs and which have to be conscious decisions to forego being a DPSer for a short time to be a somewhat weak healer vs those abilities that do both at the same time making WAR a "blue healer" and DNC able to delete raidwide damage vs PLD and RDM's offerings which require active consideration and sacrifice/trade-offs to use, making them more saved for emergencies rather than used to outright replace healers in runs. Granted, then you have Divine Veil and Magick Barrier... I think a big part of what makes the ones that are not a problem acceptable is that they have a GCD and thus a real opportunity cost to use, and while decently powerful (Clemency and Vercure) are still narrow/targeted in scope (VerCURE, not VerMEDICA), requiring multiple GCDs if the tools are going to be used for the party as a whole.]

Finally, any considerations for how Jobs should play or fit into niches. For example, AST Cards and do we/the Devs want AST to be a DPS nuker in downtime, or a party buffer? And based on the answer, establishing the secondary, non-damage functions of healer Jobs.

Once all of that has been addressed, then and only then do we need to look at healer DPS kits. Because until the above is addressed, DPS kits don't matter. They won't be engaging if you're still not doing much healing. People look back to HW and SB fondly becasue of more damage buttons, but encounters also had more frequent and threatening damage which required more healing as well. If we got the SB kits back today but not the SB encounter design and damage profiles, it would still be boring and thus not have fixed the problem. Conversely, if we had the old ARR/HW/SB style encounter design damage profiles, the healer gameplay loop would have less downtime already as more healing would need to be managed, so we MIGHT not need more DPS actions at all. But in either case, we'd be in a position to make a more informed decision. "Healer nukespam has gone down to 40% from the EW 80%, that's good, so we have less downtime and thus don't need as much DPS complexity as we would have to deal with 80%", for example.

.

So to answer your question: Addressing it must start with encounter design and damage profiles. Then an overall appraisal of all Job actions - not just healer Jobs - across the board related to mitigation, healing, and sustain. Once that is complete, then we see how much "downtime" remains after factoring in other secondary and utility actions (e.g. GCD Cards if that happens), and can address the DPS button issue at that time based on what remains. If healers only have 1 dead GCD out of 4, then the current DPS suite is probably fine. If they still have ~50% non-healing GCDs, then we get into the realm of needing to make changes.

And those changes don't always HAVE to be more buttons. For example, PLD has Holy Spirit it can use anytime as a ranged attack/disengage option, but after its 1-2-3 combo, fits it into its single-target rotation. There could be a situation where after AST casts Draw and Play, the next Gravity does boosted damage, adding this otherwise dead/not used (in single-target) button into the main rotation without actually adding a new button to the hotbars. Things like this are increases in complexity that don't necessitate new actions.

...but the point is, to know how much of that we need, we need to know how much downtime we'll have once the encounter design, potency adjustments, non-healer healing/mitigation contribution adjustments, and non-damage utility/support adjustments have been made.

Any discussion on DPS complexity has to wait until we know how complex healing will be and how much or little downtime healers will have in the first place, as well as overall hotbar bloat. All of that requires starting the discussion with encounter design, potency, gamewide Job adjustments, and support/non-damage abilities. If AST has 40 buttons with Card manipulation, there's not a lot of wiggle room to add more damage actions, for example.

In this way, the DPS action conversation is sort of like picking what color to paint the house's walls before you've poured the foundation or built the structure. Actually, a better analogy would be like picking where you want the doors to be before you've set up the floorplan - something you could modify at any time once the house is built, but is still important to the house's functioning just the same, but also which doesn't really make sense until you know what the floorplan is since you need to know where walls and passageways are before you know where doors even need to go or how many you'll need. (Bad analogy, but maybe it gets the general idea across...)

Everytime I see someone say that increasing healing requirements only or adding damage buttons only is enough to fix the role, I can't help but wonder if they actually understand the root issues of the healer role. It's not exactly simple to fix after so much decay, but fixing only one aspect without touching on the rest is just as likely to make the role worse.

I believe that we need to push SE to evolve the entire role, not just cull OGCDs and call it a day or just add a DoT and call it a day, that may make people who asked for that particular change happy for a short time, but they'll eventually realise it fixes nothing. Healers as a role lost a lot going into ShB, there's not exactly a simple "one size fits all" solution.

Agreed. Any solution is really REALLY going to need to be top down and possibly game-wide. Narrow solutions might make a subset of the playerbase happier, at least for a short time, but will not fix the problem and probably won't make others happier, possibly even alienating them (see: more healing requirements without kit or really encounter design changes in P5-8S). A solution needs to be top-down and holistic.

I have been wanting a support class that isn't a healer since the start. I believe that post ShB there is an opportunity to be able to implement a class like that without having to rebalance the role itself. Introduce a more buff and debuff focused class, keep healing and shielding on the others mostly as is, and please don't increase their dps. I genuinely miss not being able to solo anything as a whm, but I am probably in the minority there. I like that endgame content doesn't require 2 healers anymore, experimentation and personal preference should be able to go hand in hand with optimization and I think we are in a good spot there.

Honestly, I REALLY wish more MMOs would actually use the "fourth role" (Support/Control). I feel like most don't because it's difficult to balance. They were super prevalent in the early days of MMOs, like Everquest Bards/Enchanters, Guild Wars Mesmers, and even very old (Vanilla WoW) official website class descriptions called Paladins and Shamans "Primary Role: Buffer, Secondary Role: Healer" or something like that. (It's been over 10 and maybe 15 years, but I VERY distinctly remember Paladin having "Buffer" as either its primary or secondary role).

At some point, game devs decided balance was more important than anything, so Support was relegated to a sub-role of DPSers and Healers (and rarely, Tanks) instead of a fleshed out role of its own with classes and a dedicated spot in party composition (once we got the advent of the modern LFD system in WoW's Wrath of the Lich King expansions' back half).

...because FFXIV very easily has Jobs that would fit that mold. RDM with Vercure/Verregen and Protect/Shell/En-fire/stone/water/etc, for example. DNC with Curing Waltz and various support dances, BRD with songs, arguably SMN (in FFTactics and other FF games, Summoners often had some utility or support summons, like Slyph/Unicorn for healing or Golem for a party-wide barrier/stoneskin). It's not hard to envision a world where FFXIV has one less red DPS icon in party finder and has a yellow Support icon instead.

...unfortunately, it will never happen. So the question is how to scratch that support itch for people with Jobs like RDM or AST. Or if we turn the clock back to ARR, SCH did this even then.

It has never been a healer, and likely never will be. It's never been a caster either. I think they find it easier to animate a melee/tank in a trailer in such a way that gets people more excited than a caster would. Calling it now, next expansion he'll be a MCH (since Thancred is a GNB, he can't double up on that).

Agree with most of your points, but on this:

I doubt it.

Derplander has only ever been melee Jobs (Melee DPS or Tanks) in all the trailers with the ONE exception being ARR when he was an Archer, but part of a full party so several different characters/roles were being showcased at once (including some kind of class combo action where the THM empowers the ARC's arrow; the modern Bloodletter animation was, I think, based on this "empowered fire arrow" or something?)

In ARR he was a WAR (fighting alongside a PLD, BRD with cross-class Protect, BLM, and WHM; again showcasing multiple types for the relaunch), but in HW was a WAR then DRG when he changed, SB he was dual as both a MNK in the west and SAM in the east, in ShB, he went through all of the above, but was only an ARC (the Archer class, not even the Bard Job) long enough to stagger and get his bow broken from the very first enemy attack; didn't even notch, much less fire, a single arrow!) before going through WAR, DRG, MNK, and SAM before finally settling on DRK. And of course in EW, he was a PLD.

ARC was the only time Derplander was a ranged ANYthing, and the 1.0 trailer was showing off multiple classes (before the Job system was even a concept late in the game's life), the same thing ARR did but Derplander was clearly a melee (tank/WAR) from then to present. Even with Viper, he's a Melee DPS. I fully suspect that he'll mostly be a melee or melee-adjacent (e.g. if Beastmaster as added as a whip using Job, they could do some Indiana Jones/Bart from Xenogears animations). Not to mention their pattern now has been, since SB (since they said they never want to do a HW adding 3 Jobs right after having added a fourth, NIN, again), Melee+Caster, Tank+Ranged, Melee+Healer, Melee+Caster. While this doesn't mean the pattern will hold, I think it's reasonable to assume that as long as there are two Jobs, one will be either Melee DPS or Tank, and Derplander will be that Job.

They COULD change this at any time, and it's entirely possible to make an epic fight scene with Casters (before she has to be saved by WoL and Alphie, Alies does a good showing of a dynamic RDM casting spells; if that had been WoL instead, he wouldn't have needed to be saved - indeed, an irony there is they could have had him do some melee strikes then backflip away and land the big spell since RDM has a toe in melee gameplay/lore!). Heck, they even made Alphie's SGE reveal a bit cinematic as he first peppers the enemy with suppressing fire, heals her, and then turns his guns on the remaining threats. But if past is prologue, that's what they'll do.

It doesn't seem to be an anti-Healer/pro-Melee DPS bias so much as they just like melee combat (Tanks and Melee DPS) in terms of animations more for some reason. Pint's 10,000 hours BLM video on YouTube has him make a (using in-game engine) pretty epic BLM combat sequence. CLEARLY that could be done in CG as well. But for whatever reason, it's more what they go for.

But I don't think that's a bias, per se, against the Jobs/roles or players. It's more a stylistic choice for the cinematic. But it's also why I don't think MCH/DNC/BRD are likely to get the spotlight, either (again, baring a "melee-adjacent" ranged weapon user).

[Eraden]

Mao mentioned this in another thread but Mao thinkings might be good idea to mention it here too. Mao prefaces what Mao abouts to say with disclaimer that Mao in no way is expert on healing matters likes many people here. Mao thinkings biggest problem lies with fight design and fact that tanks nearly self-sufficients. Thems can do it all. Tankings, healings, DPS. Mao thinkings this not good game design. Mao nots sure how fix this but unless something is done, healers gonna be fifth wheel.

[OgruMogru]

This made me laugh entirely too much (despite the elements of truth), because of thinking of the first time I heard various healers on VC and how shocked various people were when they turned out to be guys. One of my best friends used to rant at me all the time about how he always had to say "yes, I'm a guy"

Haha, it's so funny how it can influence people's expectations like that! On a couple of occasions I've been in VC with randoms for PF and stuff and they've heard a feminine voice, very clearly talking about BLM positioning and leylines or whatever and STILL tried to talk with me about healing plans like mate I can't help you I'm a simple Blm I can offer u an addle ;_;

[Raikai]

Something I noticed...

I'm not a very experienced healer in High End duties, but I'm making my way through them... And today I've decided to try Thordan Unreal. I never really cared for Unreals before, even progging through other High Ends as a dpser, but this time decided to give a go in a Party Finder group.

I'm not quite sure if it was because I (as a SCH) got a 'lazy' WHM co-healer, but healing checks there were much higher, especially single target healing. I had to spend way more GCDs on healing/shielding than Zeromus EX, if I'd compare a trial for another trial. It's interesting to see how things changed with the healing model. The stream of damage seemed to be way more constant, and I had to keep my eyes to the HP bars all the time to make sure people had enough for the next aoe just around the corner, as opposed to the EW Trials where this 'eyes on the bars' happened with big intervals through them.