#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Punslinger]

I swear you don't want to take more damage in anything lower than savage with random healer barely able to click on more than cure1, and you don't want to confuse most people with more damage buttons.

This is Sylphie Fallacy #26: "I already encounter Healers who fail and let people die all the time! If you add any additional challenge to FFXIV Healing, it will just make everyone suffer even more! For the good of everyone else, Healing must be so easy that your daily Healer Roulettes can be accomplished by your 6-year-old as a time-out punishment."

If you really have played since beta, then you'll remember that healers had more damage buttons and fewer healing skills in ARR, and yet, somehow, as if by magic, content got cleared. You'll also know that healers with more than two brain cells to rub together should never be casting Cure 1. Ever.

Also, adding more DPS buttons does not make the healing part harder. Sylphie can ignore ten DPS buttons just as easily as she ignores two.

Again. And I guess that gonna be a lot of repeat.
But it's only an illusion.
When you are not doing 123, you are doing a forced 12131213124. Is that better? I don't think so. There is nothing engaging in any other jobs. You are only doing what you are supposed to do in the right order.
When I played dragoon back in HW I had a rotation that didn't repeat for 1min+. Now it's 12345 67854 and repeat, ogcd are fluff, you click them because they are there.

This is Sylphie Fallacy #33: "Pressing more buttons doesn't add difficulty, all you want is the illusion of choice!"

So then let's give every job the healer treatment, then. Let's bake all of BLM's damage into two spells: Fire and Thunder. BLM will do the same DPS it currently does, but all they have to do is the same 2111111 rotation that healers do. No Xenoglossy, no Fire/Ice phases, no Leylines, nada. After all, all those buttons they're pushing is just the "iLlUsIoN oF cHoIcE" right?

Or maybe, just maybe, difficulty in MMO combat is executional, not strategic. Optimal rotations are theorycrafted immediately after an update. Boss strategies are posted on YouTube. If the difficulty in this game were primarily strategic, then people would avoid spoilers and go into every fight blind, but that's not what happens, is it? Your job, no matter what your role is, is to do the fight mechanics without error, while also doing your rotation well enough that your DPS is sufficient to clear the fight before the enrage timer. Now, DPSing as a healer requires you to press two buttons. Which means healing is playing FF14 on easy mode, because the entire "rotational execution" half of the difficulty has been lopped off.

[AnotherPerson]

Can someone give me a genuine TLDR of what this thread is about? Because imma keep it a stack, I'm not reading 304 pages of this to find out what is going on.

The super TL;DR is essentially, the better you get at the game, the better your party is, and the more you and your party's ILVL increases --> the less you end up healing. Both high-end and casual effectively suffer from "Healing gets less interesting as you get better and there isn't anything else to replace it". Sometimes there is a lack of incoming damage to the point where healers feel unnecessary or better/possible to just replace the healer for another role that can either contribute to heal/dps in more effective amounts, which defeats the point of the healer role itself. Dawntrail triple down on this aspect while showing no signs of change and people are just tired from having feedback ignored for 5 years (each expansion saying they're going to make healing harder but not properly delivering on gameplay, with remarks about finding engagement in harder content), and they had enough. Xeno's clear wasn't the origin point, but it certainly led to people realizing they're looking at another 2 years of the same gameplay they are already dissatisfied with. People have various opinions on direction that healer gameplay should take to improve, but there is a collective agreement that healers simply aren't fun and making a symbolic protest. This thread is akin to an attempt to get SE's attention by garnering support of healers who are also dissatisfied with the changes made by playing DPS/tank. A lot of them are also just moving on if there are no changes to the role as a clear message the role is not for them anymore.

The majority of the thread was:
1. people expressing support
2. People discussing about the issue - also people from overseas (JP) showing up to give their feedback about the topic
3. A couple people trying to derail and deride the thread by making provocative remarks, downplaying the issue, and creating misinformation to stop the strike for their own reasons. The led to some heated and emotional talk and the moderators deleted some of the posts that were not particularly conducive to the topic.

The two main complaints that stem from this thread is feedback that is one targeted to casual and one targeted to high end being ignored.

For casual - Healers want something more to do because they only perform their main role by luck now (based on how good your party is affects how much you heal). Sometimes, the content does not give them enough to heal when other roles can cover such a large majority of the healing (sometimes a good party can forgo the healer in content that expects a healer, hence 1 Tank and 3 DPS becoming more common), and it has only been getting worse with each passing expansion - dungeons are used as an example here because everyone does dungeons and therefore everyone is affected by the changes in gameplay. Many people suggested various feedback for many years - from increasing either damage options on a healer's toolkit by making the downtime more engaging, increasing the various amounts of damage so other roles cannot cover it so they can heal more often/give various support utility that only a healer can do in general use, or nerfing non-healer role sustain. The first is non-intrusive to other roles while the latter two meet opposition from other roles by making the game's difficulty to clear content harder (affecting the worst party groups like the healer who have trouble keeping up alone vs. players rioting they don't want their healing output nerfed when queueing with a bad healer). Some healers don't necessarily want increased DPS options either, so there's no one unified answer. However, it's been clear to many healers that there is just a lack of engagement for them in some form of manner, and they're just tired from it all.

The high-end healer complaint is mainly about asking for more DPS options because healers are expected to DPS to help meet enrage checks and most of the time are maximizing efficient healing to do more DPS, the DPS side becomes very monotonous and boring (which then also applies to the entire game for these healers because content only gets easier outside high-end content). This also is a side effect from healing and mitigation being mapped out like a spreadsheet design when doing harder content. Encounter being more dynamic only has a limited effect towards this as it doesn't change how healing is played if you don't have enough damage to heal, may it be due to you + the party getting better at the game or ILVL increases. Though both tank and DPS are encroaching on healer role with how much survival and sustain they can output on their own with their choice of encounter design also can raise concerns when encounter design doesn't really want a healer to be healing in the same degree it wants them to dps.

[Lyth]

So at the start of Endwalker, my friend (a white mage) and I queued into the Dead Ends. He disconnected on the final boss, right at the start. This was in the time period where if you got disconnected, you'd be waiting an hour+ to get back into the game. So he's gone, the two dps go down. The boss is at roughly 60%. I tell them I think I can do it, and ask for permission. They tell me to go for it, so I did, and I finished the instance.

This type of clear been possible for a few expansions, but it becomes progressively easier with each successive expansion.

If you want a more concrete example, take a look at this run from the Dawntrail Media Tour. It might be subjectively stressful for the tank doing that particular solo, because of how many mechanics they get hit by. But it's also clearly not all that difficult. They easily heal themselves up through two vuln stacks. Difficult would mean clean runs only, and having limited healing tools that you had to plan out judiciously. What we have currently flies in the face of skill expression. People used to get genuinely impressed at WAR solos. Now nobody bats an eyelid because of how common it is.

Speaking generally, nobody wants to sit around and spectate a tank clumsily and slowly solo a boss while getting hit by every mechanic and with multiple vuln stacks up. That clear took 10 minutes from 50% to zero, and there's nothing you could have done as a party to terminate that pull and reset. That's a genuinely terrible situation to be in, and I'm sure you'll have more than a few newer players lose interest if that turns out to be the standard dungeon experience for them.

I don't think there's a problem with sustain actions existing on tank (assuming that they're designed appropriately), but the balance around them has become progressively more skewed over time, secondary to the defensive powercreep that we've seen across all supports. It just needs to be reined in a bit.

[Len_]

there's nothing you could have done as a party to terminate that pull and reset.

You can't even leave the dungeon. I think that's a huge problem that you can literally be held captive by a griefer tank. The devs should definitely let you leave even if you're dead.

[Milkbeard]

snip

/\ 4 posts up.
This is the best summary of the current state of the healer role.


I would argue that playing a healer is indeed more difficult in ultimate content and thus feels more engaging. However, the state is what it is: even if you execute every DPS move correctly and use oGCDs exactly when you're supposed to, it ultimately amounts to pressing Glare approximately 267 times if you are the highest parsing White Mage for Dragon Song Reprise (DSR), one of the hardest fights. This is a completely different story in casual content where the game is more forgiving and doesn't require nearly as much precision.

Some will argue that we should nerf or subtract from other roles, but I disagree. They can add DPS rotations and make content that doesn’t require healing from a healer require it, just like in ultimates. I’m not suggesting we need the rapid-fire ground telegraphs that high-level play demands, but aspects of group damage, soaking, and tank busters could be incorporated into trials and roulettes without ruining people’s gaming experience.

I like red mage's addle and magick barrier. I like knowing that in the final phase of DSR my whole team could die if I don't mit the final ahk morns. Deleting that would be a tragedy in my opinion. There is nothing wrong with cross-role actions. That's what healers want, don't they? To dps?

[Bloody_Kenny]

Speaking about tanks (well Warriors) soloing bosses, the earliest example in my memory would be Patch 2.0. Yeah, right, start of ARR, when we only had Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace as end-game dungeons. My friend, who mained WAR, just asked us to let him solo the first two bosses of Wanderer's Palace. And he did that, and back then it was actually impressive considering WAR's kit and how bad it was at release. Nowadays, it's nothing special at all.

[Turtledeluxe]

Using heal checks instead of just balancing the jobs with the encounters feels like putting a band aid on a severed arm imo.

I can understand nerfing other jobs not being the main goal and not being particularly fun to talk about or imagine, but I view it as essential. One way or the other. Encounters need to be designed to nerf the sustain of any job enabling healer bypass OR jobs need to be directly nerfed and encounters should be designed to account for the changes (if that's even necessary).

Reporting griefers also won't don't jack and you know it.

[Elun]

Hello I just followed an in-game spam link requesting I "join the conversation" so I am

1) You can do dungeons without a healer, without a tank, or without DPS, because they are easy content that is designed to be easy for everyone
2) You can do ultimate raids without a healer, without a tank, or without DPS, because nerds do nerd things when we get bored
3) I am looking forward to all the instaqueues I'm gonna get as WHM in DT ez tome cap

Not saying healers *shouldn't* get some new fun buttons but holy this seems way too excessive/overdramatized

I have now joined the conversation have a wonderful rest of your night

[OdinelStarrei]

This type of clear been possible for a few expansions, but it becomes progressively easier with each successive expansion.

If you want a more concrete example, take a look at this run from the Dawntrail Media Tour. It might be subjectively stressful for the tank doing that particular solo, because of how many mechanics they get hit by. But it's also clearly not all that difficult. They easily heal themselves up through two vuln stacks. Difficult would mean clean runs only, and having limited healing tools that you had to plan out judiciously. What we have currently flies in the face of skill expression. People used to get genuinely impressed at WAR solos. Now nobody bats an eyelid because of how common it is.

Speaking generally, nobody wants to sit around and spectate a tank clumsily and slowly solo a boss while getting hit by every mechanic and with multiple vuln stacks up. That clear took 10 minutes from 50% to zero, and there's nothing you could have done as a party to terminate that pull and reset. That's a genuinely terrible situation to be in, and I'm sure you'll have more than a few newer players lose interest if that turns out to be the standard dungeon experience for them.

I don't think there's a problem with sustain actions existing on tank (assuming that they're designed appropriately), but the balance around them has become progressively more skewed over time, secondary to the defensive powercreep that we've seen across all supports. It just needs to be reined in a bit.

Following up here, this is an issue that indeed, has gotten worse with time, and will continue to be an issue as tanks get more and more defensive cooldowns.

I keep mentioning that solo I did, and I think it'll make a good comparision to the video you've posted, showing that this has been happening for a long, long time now. Even when you have someone who is practiced, you can only do the same mechanic set so many times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wn2KlifwWY

Even at the time, in Shadowbringers, where DRK was defensively at it's absolute weakest, I never felt like I was in any danger whatsoever. And now that solos are becoming more and more commonplace, I feel a lot of that luster has been lost. Note that I am not even that good at this game, average if I'm being generous. The content just isn't threatening.

Quality is bit low, sorry about that, it's before I got a good computer, but while before I would have looked at this video with a point of pride, showing that I didn't need WAR level sustain to solo, (this was pre-LD change),even though I made mistakes in it, but now I look at it with a bit of contempt for myself. If I had some randoms that all died, would they really enjoy watching me do this encounter all on my own? I'm bored just watching it back again. I know Quetz is pretty easy, but...still.

[Turtledeluxe]

Hello I just followed an in-game spam link requesting I "join the conversation" so I am

1) You can do dungeons without a healer, without a tank, or without DPS, because they are easy content that is designed to be easy for everyone
2) You can do ultimate raids without a healer, without a tank, or without DPS, because nerds do nerd things when we get bored
3) I am looking forward to all the instaqueues I'm gonna get as WHM in DT ez tome cap

Not saying healers *shouldn't* get some new fun buttons but holy this seems way too excessive/overdramatized

I have now joined the conversation have a wonderful rest of your night

The predominant form of dungeon and trial participation has role requirements.

Do you have an example of 4 dps and 4 healers running in a dungeon and how comparable it is to 4 tanks doing it? I'm pretty sure you don't. And for the record I do, and they're just clearly not intended to be played that way despite how you are framing it so hand wavingly.

Enjoy your queues.