#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Melchan]

I only read the summary of complaints in the OP so I just wanted to add that the healing interface is also atrocious. There's no built-in click-to-cast options and mouse-over macros function poorly in this game, not queuing casts as expected. So casting heals and buffs (especially as AST to give my party cards) requires individually targeting each person in turn. Just the simple act of "throw heal on tank between DPS casts" requires at least 5 inputs (Glare, target tank, cast heal, retarget boss, Glare) and it's pretty disappointing. I mained healer in WoW but it just feels bland and outdated in FFXIV. It could be so, so, SO much better.

[TheDustyOne]

I only read the summary of complaints in the OP so I just wanted to add that the healing interface is also atrocious. There's no built-in click-to-cast options and mouse-over macros function poorly in this game, not queuing casts as expected. So casting heals and buffs (especially as AST to give my party cards) requires individually targeting each person in turn. Just the simple act of "throw heal on tank between DPS casts" requires at least 5 inputs (Glare, target tank, cast heal, retarget boss, Glare) and it's pretty disappointing. I mained healer in WoW but it just feels bland and outdated in FFXIV. It could be so, so, SO much better.

This is definitely another thing I'd like to see added, not just mouse-overs, but also ground-targeting abilities be used on single press rather than double-press or click-to-place.

[Evergrey]

This is honestly why something like Barbariccia EX were so well liked, it's probably the most unanimously praised fight in EW, an opinion I share. Rather than relying on debuff overload, or a really precise positioning for every member of the team, Barb was fast, there was always something happening or to plan for, damage was frequent, and one player making a mistake usually did not cascade into an immediate unrecoverable situation. But the underlying mechanics were straightforward to understand, there was no need for a twenty page toolbox or a 15 minute YT video. The fight builds upon itself, and I even think tanks have a solid time in there. There's a lot of good there. I think every role got their time to shine in that fight somehow.

But I will highlight that it's not "too many" people failing a mechanic leading to a wipe. It's one person doing something major, or sometimes minor incorrectly, and the result is the entire party exploding instantly. It's okay to have those things in fights. But when it's every fight, I feel that it starts breaking the trinity somewhat, outside of the more common issues detailed in this thread, because you didn't wipe because "the tank didn't get aggro" or "the dps check was failed" or "the healers were out of MP", you failed because Player 5 was out of position on mechanic sequence 4, or Player 2 didn't read their partner's debuff correctly and did 999999 damage to the group.

I feel that it promotes really frustrating and darwinistic perspectives for progressing through content.

Mm.. a lot of the higher tier fights (I've only done savage pandemonium 1-5 so can't speak for all) really required the group as a whole to know what to do and where to stand, or else it can really crumble fast.
Which is counteractive when I think that a Healers toolkit is designed around a fight where accidents happen.
But since every fight is static with its rotations and mechanics are more or less all marked out, accidents are less likely to happen.
Unless ofc new to a fight and learning said boss patterns.


Edit:

The simplest solution I can think of would be to make that a boss's auto attacks at least would hit for harder.
And that is the bare minimum to give healers something to heal up during a boss fight.

[Absurdity]

I feel that it promotes really frustrating and darwinistic perspectives for progressing through content.

A feeling I absolutely share. It leaves no room for the party to make up for weaker players, either everyone executes mechanics perfectly all the time or you get 0 progression done, let alone actually see enrage.

[UnconfirmedCat]

Just some of my personal responses to the things I've heard since this started. Quite a few of these are redundant with responses already made by people in the thread. I'm not even strawmanning with these. Every single one of these points has been said by someone criticizing #FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE. It's quite...uh....astonishing...let's say that...astonishing.

A: Healers are really dumb, therefore they deserve to have the simplest rotation possible.
B: Okay, well you can play any job in this game at any time. So the people who play healers also play DPS and tanks, so we need to logically demand those rotations get dumbed down to match healer.

A: Healers have so many tools and need to have easy rotations because their job is to correct the party's mistakes.
B: Okay. If dungeons are so easy to be done without healers, then you don't really need a healer to correct mistakes. Additionally, in ultimates and savages how are you supposed to "fix people's mistakes" when 80% of mistakes just flat out cause a wipe. They even disabled healer res in Criterion, and res is entirely disabled from Criterion (savage).

A: If you want an engaging healer experience then go do Ultimate. (Yikes, this is also straight from Yoshi-P....)
B: I should not have to do the literal hardest content in the game to enjoy a role. A role should be enjoyable at all difficulties to a high degree. And even then, by striking aren't healers doing exactly what you're telling them to do? Hecking off because they don't find certain content engaging?

A: I'm just going to use trusts then, lol (Zepla literally said this)
B: Okay, have fun queuing your roulettes with trusts I guess?

A: Dungeons aren't designed to be fun, they are designed to be easy.
B: Okay that's just another reason not to queue into dungeons as healer? It's kinda the point that it's boring and too easy? ???

A: (In response to the Xeno video of the first dungeon getting cleared during the media tour with no healer) It's only the first dungeon of the expansion that was cleared without healers. It's supposed to be easy.
B: Uh. Tower of Zot and Holminster Switch are easily the two hardest leveling dungeons for trash pulls in their respective expansions.

A: Your healer strike will never work! It'll not even make an impact!
B: Okay. Still not queuing for your roulettes, because it sucks.

A: Your healer strike is just disruptive and spiteful towards people who just want to run content!
B: But I thought....

[GoatOfWar]

If i was a healer main i wouldn't just stop at ''not queuing as healer''
I would try to maximise what little individual impact i can by actively queuing and pffing dps. And urging others to do so too.
Which by the way, is the perfect time for it. Because we're in a double dps job drop expansion.

[Evergrey]

If i was a healer main i wouldn't just stop at ''not queuing as healer''
I would try to maximise what little individual impact i can by actively queuing and pffing dps. And urging others to do so too.
Which by the way, is the perfect time for it. Because we're in a double dps job drop expansion.

Personally I have little worry about that this Strike will have much of an impact when it comes to queues.
There are more players who play healer than years ago, when a DPS queue could last for 30min (if lucky) up to an hour or more.
At most I believe that's where we gonna be, if anything.
And as an old geezer, I've lived through those times already, I can survive another recap.
Heck, I still get a little surprised daily when I queue as a DPS and I only have to wait for a couple of seconds up to 5 minutes on avarage.
So a couple of hunders or thousands of healers switching due to the Strike, over a bunch of servers sharing a datashard queue system, I'm not worrying.

[Aravell]

This is honestly why something like Barbariccia EX were so well liked, it's probably the most unanimously praised fight in EW, an opinion I share. Rather than relying on debuff overload, or a really precise positioning for every member of the team, Barb was fast, there was always something happening or to plan for, damage was frequent, and one player making a mistake usually did not cascade into an immediate unrecoverable situation. But the underlying mechanics were straightforward to understand, there was no need for a twenty page toolbox or a 15 minute YT video. The fight builds upon itself, and I even think tanks have a solid time in there. There's a lot of good there. I think every role got their time to shine in that fight somehow.

While tanks do get some stuff to do in Barbariccia EX, I do find it disappointing that the fight only has 2 tankbusters and a couple tank proxy markers. All the tank damage is far apart enough that you can kitchen sink them. You can even kitchen sink the tank stack marker if you have it as OT and not get punished for it. She does have parts where the mechanics are easier done if you move her though, so there's that.

I personally think it's a more enjoyable fight on healer than any other role though.

[GoatOfWar]

Personally I have little to worry about that this Strike will have much of an impact when it comes to queues.
There are more players who play healer than years ago, when a DPS queue could last for 30min (if lucky) up to an hour or more.
At most I believe that's where we gonna be, if anything.
And as an old geezer, I've lived through those times already, I can survive another recap.

I'm affraid this strike won't really accomplish much, but that doesn't mean that people shouldn't try.
People are suuuuuuper self centered and don't care about the gameplay experience of others. So their initial response to this strike is ridicule and apathy.
Supports (Healers moreso than tanks) are largely being relegated to background npcs with unengaging gameplay loops. This needs to change.
We're about to enter a new expansion and these concerns are just shoved to the next expansion. People don't want to wait 3 years to enjoy the game again.

[OdinelStarrei]

Mm.. a lot of the higher tier fights (I've only done savage pandemonium 1-5 so can't speak for all) really required the group as a whole to know what to do and where to stand, or else it can really crumble fast.
Which is counteractive when I think that a Healers toolkit is designed around a fight where accidents happen.
But since every fight is static with its rotations and mechanics are more or less all marked out, accidents are less likely to happen.
Unless ofc new to a fight and learning said boss patterns.


Edit:

The simplest solution I can think of would be to make that a boss's auto attacks at least would hit for harder.
And that is the bare minimum to give healers something to heal up during a boss fight.

I'm glad you are receptive to the statements I'm providing.

This whole situation is based on a fundamental mismatch between the toolkits of the support jobs and the encounter design itself.

If the fights are static, and the support kits are also static, I think it can cause players to become bored very quickly, because there is no variance, and further more, there is not allowed to be any variance, as that usually leads to a wipe via said body check.

If the fights are going to be mechanic puzzles, with no room to salvage mistakes, players who have "solved" all the puzzles should still be allowed to have fun. I think we have gone way too far into the "spreadsheet meta" of fights, and I support that statement with the increasing frequency of situations where a player will know "i stand here for X mechanic" but doesn't actually understand how said mechanic works because it is SO fixed and inflexible. When healers (and tanks, but we're in the healer thread) have learned everything, we end up hitting a threshold of performance where we can't improve any further outside filler damage, because the game has removed aspects of the role that could promote a more impressive showcase of skill/crisis management/job knowledge.

For example, tanks nowadays specialize in helping a single member mitigate damage to an sizable extent. Oh no! Our Dragoon is being attacked by a targeted, unavoidable attack that will drop them to such low HP they will die to the next raidwide! (Alexander 12 or Omega 7 prey marker for example) Tanks should team up and help that person.

That's not damage, that's not a rotation, that's tanks doing something unique and interacting with the party in a way that only tanks can do. There's not enough of that right now. Instead we just dump all our cooldowns on the telegraphed buster and that's that. Make sure everything is ready for 2 minute burst by the way.
I think that some knowledgeable healers feel that their role is under attack from all directions right now. Tanks heal too much. Bosses don't hurt enough. Everything is a mitigation check. Anytime someone makes a mistake, we have to reset or in situations where mistakes are allowed, healers have significantly less agency and impact, with a gameplay loop that doesn't support the toolkit that has been provided. And there are fewer mechanics outside of fixed stack markers or "set HP to 1" that are designed for healers specifically as of late. What happened to those Shinryu heads that you had to heal to kill? Why aren't we getting more stuff like Fountain of Fire from Pandemonium 3? That was cool!

Are you a party of tanks, healers, and DPS fighting a boss? Or are you just eight players doing synchronized swimming with flashy lighting effects?

If something becomes significantly less fun the better you are at it, or the better your group is, I don't think that is healthy design. I feel that people will just become ambivalent, or worse, really bitter. And well, here we are.