#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Teno]

I would argue current healer design is why we have so many bad healers in the first place. "Hey here's 18 different buttons anyway you only use 4 of them, GCD more like Glare cooldown" and people drawn to the role that just want to mindlessly press 1 and die to every mechanic because they're watching Netflix in the other window.

This is entirely true. This is a role you pick when you want to get something done while 90% afk or with the brain turned off, because you can perfectly get away with it with almost no impact on your contribution. The only measure that can tell a healer did something cool is on the rare rescue use to save someone in a clutch.

[Jojoya]

Oh man, I feel this one. I don't think I'm a particularly good healer, just good enough to keep the party alive most of the time. But so often, when I queue into content as a DPS, at least one of the healers has zero clue what they're doing, Medica II spammers included. Not using Esuna to remove Doom in Dun Scaith, not healing anyone besides the tank (sometimes not even the tank), never using Raise... It's suffering. Healing genuinely is not hard, how are these people so clueless?

It's been stated several times in this thread in addition to other places that healers aren't needed to clear content.

Since healers aren't needed to clear content, then there's no reason to learn how to heal. They can level up healing jobs by just dealing damage for the sake of achievements if they want.

But some noticed that healers are still needed for Duty Finder to form parties even though they aren't needed to clear the content. They choose to queue as healer for the fast queue and then can be lazy on their free ride to loot. After all someone has to queue for the useless role, might as well be them.

And thus the swarm of healers, good and bad, appeared out of the depths to replace the striking healers when Dawntrail released...

[flowerfairy]

snip

Thank you for sharing JP thoughts, it's very interesting see discussion between the two sides here!

When it comes to making video games, I think a common and successful tactic to make it "easy to play, hard to master." In other words, lowering the skill floor (the minimum skill level required) to invite new players to try it out, and raising the skill ceiling (the highest amount of skill expression possible) to keep veterans interested in the game. Making a game both accessible and engaging requires keeping the skill floor as low as possible, and raising the skill ceiling as high as possible.

Currently, I think the skill floor for healers, which can be considered just keeping the party alive, is low, which is a good thing. However, the skill ceiling, which can be considered any kind of optimization while the party is still alive, can be raised much higher.

Healers have an abundance of healing abilities that do the same job as what their GCD heals already did, for no cost of MP or damage. For example, AST's Celestial Opposition does exactly what Aspected Helios does. SCH's Fey Blessing can feel like Indominability, or even the new Seraphism feeling very similar to Dissipation except that you don't have to eat the fairy as a cost. In general, I feel like having healers depend more on GCD heals and replacing the redundant ability heals with more interesting utility or attack abilities is a good step towards raising the skill ceiling and keeping the skill floor low.

I don't want to exclude casual healers, but I believe that using GCD heals properly is a part of the skill floor, because you have to level up almost all of the healers using only GCD heals in lower level content. So that's why I believe we should start replacing overabundant healing abilities with other kinds of abilities. I think this kind of design for healer kits can support any direction taken with battle content, whether it stays relatively predictable to heal or if more damage intensive mechanics are introduced.

[Somnolence]

I would argue current healer design is why we have so many bad healers in the first place. "Hey here's 18 different buttons anyway you only use 4 of them, GCD more like Glare cooldown" and people drawn to the role that just want to mindlessly press 1 and die to every mechanic because they're watching Netflix in the other window.

I also think that all these oGCDs do not make healing easier for casual healers as its too complicated to pick what to use with too many options, especially since casual content = roulettes which involves a lot of syncing down where they are taken away so most of the time they aren't even in the position to use them.

[Supersnow845]

Modern healer tooltips are absolutely hot garbage at conveying their actual effects

You can see this with seraphism

Ask a SCH main what seraphism is and they will tell you “ugly spreadlo amplifier”
Ask someone not very knowledgeable about SCH but decently knowledgeable about healers and you’ll get “pure healing god mode”
Ask someone who has no idea about healers to read the tooltip and explain it and you’ll probably get a blank look

The healing tooltips need to be so much better written

[MisterNublet]

But some noticed that healers are still needed for Duty Finder to form parties even though they aren't needed to clear the content. They choose to queue as healer for the fast queue and then can be lazy on their free ride to loot. After all someone has to queue for the useless role, might as well be them.

And thus the swarm of healers, good and bad, appeared out of the depths to replace the striking healers when Dawntrail released...

That is what votekick is for, and I intend to use it on every healer expecting a free ride.

Not that I will have many opportunities to do so, since I'll be running war/pld with three dps buddies for all of the msq. Instant que times and faster dungeons clears!

[Bun_Vivant]

A few of us asked questions on the japanese forums regarding their stance on the healer design, and it seems that they indeed like this type of braindead 111 gameplay. It does not bode well......

Looks like you choose the wrong story-driven theme-park JRPG MMO to get invested in.
Be careful not to succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy.

[rawker]

Ask a SCH main what seraphism is and they will tell you “ugly spreadlo amplifier”

"Ugly global whispering dawn spreadlo amplifier"

[xbahax92]

The ignorance of the trolls. If I had a gil everytime a clown shows up, I'd still have 1. Cannot really tell if they're the entire circus right now.

[Bun_Vivant]

Genuine question, but isn't this the original goal of the trinity: different responsibilities that each role needs to enact to ensure joint success, and any role failing will cause a cost (e.g. a wipe) for the group?

I doubt it. For one thing, every job has to be able to clear the solo content of the MSQ in a reasonable amount of time and with only a modest level of skill. So "tanks" and "healers" need to have decent DPS, and DPS needs some survivability. Unless you want the kit for a job to change radically when you enter multi-player content, this inescapably leads to the roles of the trinity becoming less distinct.

Alolalo Island (sp?) is an interesting example. The kit is modified, of course, but I found clear times didn't vary much based on which role I or my spouse used (or between solo and group runs). Clear times do vary by class in other content of course: in a ridiculous example, I can't match the 7 second clear time we can get for Howling Eye Extreme on a pair of unsynced WARs when we do it on other classes, but that's a way-off-the-norms case.