#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Elexander]

I'm going to take it none of you with this most ludicrous opinion regarding "healer simplicity" has ever done a single end-game content in your life. Based on the Lodestone of the characters of the first page alone I can guess most of you probably never even stepped into a Savage fight, dare say Ultimate. Maybe Extremes. Maybe.

This is not to say that the "casual dungeon leveling experience" is to be disregarded but it's definitely not the main focus of job balancing in FFXIV. There's harder content where you actually have to heal people and your damage does matter. If you're taking your metrics from dungeon running and FATE trains then I'm sorry to inform you that's not what the game combat is mainly designed for. Watching a tank (a warrior, specifically) survive mob pulls with his own devices will not make you any less useful - rather, that gives you room to effectively help clearing mob pulls with the actually pretty good Healer AoE DPS. If playing with players with varying skills bothers you, you can always go to your Island Sanctuary and do Housing, though. Maybe RP. That kind of content also exists.

Though I must say I like this post because of what it shows - a community, even if niche, getting together to try and find a common ground with development. The action is respectable, though the reasoning behind it is... mildly questionable.

[Kayokane]

These words don't mean anything.

They mean exactly what they say. There is nothing impossible about seeking a compromise. "We don't make the decisions" you say as you decide to 'quit' healer, but only sometimes, if you feel like it, because:

Even if someone stops playing healer a few days per week as a response to the strike, that is still a valid part of the strike.

There is no need to actually commit to what is in turn a protest against the devs who have... over the course of EW have given us several of the better fights we've seen since Stormblood, and are giving us new DPS tools in DT... but Oh No they made the first dungeon of the new expansion too easy. It's almost like the devs are trying to compromise between twelve different positions of "We know how to make the game better."


Do I want more fun tools to play with, yes. Do I want the devs to take away or make the tools of the other roles weaker, no.

[LalaLumi]

We absolutely want more to heal and more engaging healing otherwise we are simply a worse caster, we simply view downtime as inevitable and thus want our downtime tools restored as well. That's why tank sustain has been highlighted repeatedly, they are doing our job for us which is an untenable position. They need to restore actually healing AND add a basic damage rotation or I'm not returning to the role, lacking damage spells is only justifiable if we're at that 95-5 split of healing/damage.

Fair. Valid. And I'll concede that you've got a major point.

[TheDustyOne]

I'm going to take it none of you with this most ludicrous opinion has ever done a single end-game content in your life. Based on the Lodestone of the characters of the page alone I can guess you probably never even stepped into a Savage fight, dare say Ultimate. Maybe Extremes. Maybe.

This is not to say that the "casual dungeon leveling experience" is to be disregarded but it's definitely not the main focus of job balancing in FFXIV. There's harder content where you actually have to heal people and your damage does matter. If you're taking your metrics from dungeon running and FATE trains then I'm sorry to inform you that's not what the game combat is mainly designed for. You can always go to your Island Sanctuary and do Housing, though. Maybe RP. That kind of content also exists.

Though I must say I like this post because of what it shows - a community, even if niche, getting together to try and find a common ground with development. The action is respectable, though the reasoning behind it is... mildly questionable.

I've dabbled in EX and Savage last expac, I didn't clear most of them because I only bothered to raid with friends who were very sporadic in when they raided, it was dull then and from what I've heard from friends that have since quit, it's dull now. "Go play ultimate" would be moving the goalpost even further and ignores that the other jobs don't need those difficulties to still be fun in casual content.

[WeakestZenosEnjoyer]

Spikes of big damage followed by nothing happening for the rest of the fight is just really bad design actually,

it overprioritizes mitigation and creates this binary where you're never actually balancing between damage and healing but doing a hard switch because the game said it's healer time. Some players that had been in DPS mode for the last 30~ levels or even intentionally became a healer as ez mode will crumble in that situation.

[Iedarus]

That's what SGE was supposed to be. They literally were given a mechanic that heals for dealing damage. Albeit, it's not very impressive in practice, but that ship has already sailed and sank, unfortunately. I'm not opposed to 1 healer being the "DPS healer." In fact, I think that's quite healthy. Look at WAR. WAR is the "Healing Tank". Having a gameplay nuance that sets you apart is healthy, acceptable, and perfectly valid...right up until your niche is literally comprised of ostracizing an entire role which is where we are now.

WAR should be the berserker self heal tank. Paladin should be the high sustain healer tank. Still baffles me that me using a shield isn't enough to compete with the tired joke of "person too angry to die." WAR is honestly just busted, like you said.

SGE is sadly copy paste Scholar, and it is TAKING Scholar's old kit in Dawntrail. Would be at least nice if it had more interactions with Kardia, for example, healing an ally places a buff called Placebo Kardia (so glad I'm in nursing school so I can help lean into Sage's doctor aesthetic lol) that heals half the amount of every Kardia proc. Remove Physis and let Psyche proc Kardia. I'd also make Soteria a shorter cooldown on top of Philosophia.

Holy shit between this and my idea of also giving addersting per x procs of Kardia--did I just fix Sage?

[UnconfirmedCat]

They mean exactly what they say. There is nothing impossible about seeking a compromise. "We don't make the decisions" you say as you decide to 'quit' healer, but only sometimes, if you feel like it, because:
There is no need to actually commit to what is in turn a protest against the devs who have... over the course of EW have given us several of the better fights we've seen since Stormblood, and are giving us new DPS tools in DT... but Oh No they made the first dungeon of the new expansion too easy. It's almost like the devs are trying to compromise between twelve different positions of "We know how to make the game better."


Do I want more fun tools to play with, yes. Do I want the devs to take away or make they tools of the other roles weaker, no.

What compromise is there to make? Please enlighten me. Because from my perspective, there is no compromising available in this situation. The development team is the arbiter of the situation. They are the ones that either compromise or don't on any single one of the points brought up in the thread regardless of side. Not only that, but you're trying to bully people over not quitting the game entirely over the role, when for many people, like myself, healing isn't the entire game. Quitting healing does not have to equal quitting the entire game. If all someone cares about is that, then yeah sure, but everyone is fully within reason to neglect specific parts of the game to prove a point, while enjoying the parts they do. And, we are fortunate enough to have objective proof that SE does respond to this kind of behavior, otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten 3 iteration of Diadem. Otherwise, they wouldn't have reversed their changes to boss hit boxes going into DT. You do not need to boycott the game entirely to make your opinion felt in this game, and anyone who tries to imply you have to is being insincere and ignorant.

[Pandurah]

snip snap

Our healing kits are fine, if overkill for most of the dangers we face. But our dps kits were more interesting. Problem is, healer used to be fun. And it's not just about stance dancing or whatever. Being a main healer from before (ARR/HW/SB) ShB to now, it's really quite depressing to look at what's been removed. So saying 'play something else' doesn't solve the issue, obviously, otherwise more healer mains would've happily switched before now. And honestly, being told 'you asked for this' is a bland overgeneralization, because I never did, and I don't know anyone who actually did. I, and others, have been "leaving feedback" since we saw the changes ShB brought with it. For years now.

[ty_taurus]

That's what SGE was supposed to be. They literally were given a mechanic that heals for dealing damage. Albeit, it's not very impressive in practice, but that ship has already sailed and sank, unfortunately. I'm not opposed to 1 healer being the "DPS healer." In fact, I think that's quite healthy. Look at WAR. WAR is the "Healing Tank". Having a gameplay nuance that sets you apart is healthy, acceptable, and perfectly valid...right up until your niche is literally comprised of ostracizing an entire role which is where we are now.

I think healers can stand to have a little more than just Glare spam even if we were able to restructure healing to be a more prominent aspect of your gameplay, even if only to make soloing, field ops, and deep dungeons more enjoyable.

For example, I think White Mage really isn't far off from being in a pretty good spot DPS wise. I'd want to see PoM reduced to a 60 second cooldown, because the buff isn't even very strong anyway, and for Glare IV to be a separate action that can also be used outside of PoM windows. If each tic of Dia gave you a chance to proc a use of Glare IV, and you can store up to 3 procs, then even if they are damage tools, you can also use them for movement. PoM just gives you 3 procs. Make those procs more visually striking, like perhaps having an Astral Fire/Umbral ice style visual element to make it easier to recognize at a glance, and White Mage has a simple, yet slightly more dynamic set of attacks that I don't think asks all that much from the person who prefers focusing on healing. You can even bring Aero III back as a weaker version of Glare IV at an earlier level.

But I really do want to see Sage revamped to fill the fantasy of "DPS healer" properly. We might not get that until 8.0, which I can be okay with, I just hope that they can make some adjustments to make the attacks Sage currently has available more frequently, and to revamp Toxikon into something more useful.

[Fawkes]

The part about this that irks me, however, and I'm sure I'm going to start an armageddon with this one, is why in the bloody hell the #1 solution to the problem is to give healers MORE dps spells. Like...excuse me? With respect, I think we are missing the entire point here. Dopamine and serotonin (aka: the happy brain chemicals) are released from healers when they make the blue or green HP bars go up - not from making the red bars go down. I understand the sentiment of wanting to "give healers something to do during downtime", but the entire point is that there shouldn't be that much downtime for healers to begin with. Why am I spending 95% of my playtime doing DPS as a healer? Can we just take a minute, also, to realize this isn't hyperbole? Regardless of how "engaging" the DPS application is, it shouldn't be that high on any planet whatsoever, and it's appalling to me that the mainstream solution is to push healers even further in the direction they're already headed because the idea of healers actually interacting with their respective healing kits is so foreign of a concept. We should be advocating for more opportunities and class reforms that not only force, but actively incentivize the frequent, meaningful integration of our entire roster of healing abilities.

People want more DPS abilities because we used to have more and we liked it, and then the jobs were gutted. We aren't headed towards more DPS, it's been the exact opposite. Your complaint has nothing to do with how many DPS buttons we have, they could add more and it wouldn't change how much healing we have to do at all. Those are entirely separate issues, it sounds like what you want is better encounter design and there's no reason for you to be anti DPS buttons.