#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[BunnyQueen]

I've been thinking more about the concept of role identity for healers in FFXIV compared to other MMOs I've played over the last 20 or so years and I think I've come up with some points that haven't really been thoroughly discussed here yet. I've spoken before on the problems with healers and what healers should be in this thread, but there's a gap between "What's wrong with healers/what should healers be?" and "What are scenarios in FFXIV that illustrate how healers in this game differ from healers in basically every other MMO?" So, here's some illustrative questions.

Healers:

1. Do you regularly spend more time healing your party than DPSing?
2. Have you ever died to a mechanic because you were desperately trying to heal someone?
3. Do you frequently feel like you need to make a conscious choice on whether or not to cast a healing spell, knowing there would be repercussions if you chose poorly?
4. Do you frequently feel you need to carefully manage your resources (MP, class points, etc.) to prevent your party from dying?
5. Have you ever failed an encounter because your party lacked enough healing output despite your party not failing critical encounter mechanics (e.g., a "healer gear check")?
6. Do you commonly have a non-healer in your party sacrifice DPS in order to prioritize your safety?
7. Are you ever concerned that your healing may accidentally draw threat/aggro, leading to your death and/or a party wipe?
8. Do you feel like a vital member to the overall encounter effort instead of just someone to "clean up others' mistakes"?

Every one of these things is extremely common for healing roles in other MMOs, but I'm guessing they're not for most of you (they certainly aren't for me).

That's a big problem IMO.

This right here literally is EVERYTHING that I want a healer to FEEL, this is amazing! thank you! By healer being fixed it will also fix my role. (Tank) Too many who main the same role as me have developed this weird AF god complex and it pisses me off.

[Xurtan]

I've been thinking more about the concept of role identity for healers in FFXIV compared to other MMOs I've played over the last 20 or so years and I think I've come up with some points that haven't really been thoroughly discussed here yet. I've spoken before on the problems with healers and what healers should be in this thread, but there's a gap between "What's wrong with healers/what should healers be?" and "What are scenarios in FFXIV that illustrate how healers in this game differ from healers in basically every other MMO?" So, here's some illustrative questions.

Healers:

1. Do you regularly spend more time healing your party than DPSing?
2. Have you ever died to a mechanic because you were desperately trying to heal someone?
3. Do you frequently feel like you need to make a conscious choice on whether or not to cast a healing spell, knowing there would be repercussions if you chose poorly?
4. Do you frequently feel you need to carefully manage your resources (MP, class points, etc.) to prevent your party from dying?
5. Have you ever failed an encounter because your party lacked enough healing output despite your party not failing critical encounter mechanics (e.g., a "healer gear check")?
6. Do you commonly have a non-healer in your party sacrifice DPS in order to prioritize your safety?
7. Are you ever concerned that your healing may accidentally draw threat/aggro, leading to your death and/or a party wipe?
8. Do you feel like a vital member to the overall encounter effort instead of just someone to "clean up others' mistakes"?

Every one of these things is extremely common for healing roles in other MMOs, but I'm guessing they're not for most of you (they certainly aren't for me).

That's a big problem IMO.

Oh this is a fun one.

1. Nope.
2. Nope (I guess unless you count server tic not having a tank's invuln actually activate despite going on CD, and having Bene land on their cooling corpse?).
3. No, all damage is scripted and the vast majority of healing is oGCD.
4. Not in several years. Mana hasn't been a factor since... early Omega, maybe? Maybe earlier?
5. No. Mechanics are either 'survive and heal through fine' or 'insta-gib regardless of healing'.
6. No, because the non-healer classes that have shields and the like are oGCD.
7. Not since early Stormblood or thereabouts?
8. Eh? I mean, yes kinda, because average Savage is hard to do without any healers at all. But I mostly spend the time Glaring, so it doesn't actually FEEL vital.

[BunnyQueen]

Oh this is a fun one.

1. Nope.
2. Nope (I guess unless you count server tic not having a tank's invuln actually activate despite going on CD, and having Bene land on their cooling corpse?).
3. No, all damage is scripted and the vast majority of healing is oGCD.
4. Not in several years. Mana hasn't been a factor since... early Omega, maybe? Maybe earlier?
5. No. Mechanics are either 'survive and heal through fine' or 'insta-gib regardless of healing'.
6. No, because the non-healer classes that have shields and the like are oGCD.
7. Not since early Stormblood or thereabouts?
8. Eh? I mean, yes kinda, because average Savage is hard to do without any healers at all. But I mostly spend the time Glaring, so it doesn't actually FEEL vital.

That's a lot of no's where there should be a yes if a game does healing right. Meaning healing is done wrong in FFXIV.

[Rolder50]

It's usually not a "concrete mechanic," but an event that can happen in encounters. Some that come off the top of my head:

• Abandoning DPS on the boss to CC/kill/otherwise deal with add(s) troubling the healer, separately from a designed mechanic to do so (i.e., boss goes invuln and adds spawn)
• Using a protective ability on a healer as they're too squishy to survive a mechanic
• Assisting a healer in escaping a positional threat
• Having a situation where you can eat a mechanic to keep it from hitting the healer, sacrificing yourself to keep them alive

A few examples come to mind in WoW with their newer Evoker class. You can pick up and move someone ala Rescue but it moves both of you to a target destination. Sacrificing personal DPS to help because of course you can't be casting while doing that. Then you have a spell that allows you and a target to cast while moving for a short bit, and is often used on healers so they can move for mechanics while pumping heals.

[MagiusNecros]

Unfortunately FFXIV has no mechanisms to ease new/casual players into this and many don't even know that they are missing out and that would actually like to face and overcome this challenge.

We need more fights like Barbariccia. Best fight in all of Endwalker IMO.

[IDontPetLalas]

It's usually not a "concrete mechanic," but an event that can happen in encounters. Some that come off the top of my head:

• Abandoning DPS on the boss to CC/kill/otherwise deal with add(s) troubling the healer, separately from a designed mechanic to do so (i.e., boss goes invuln and adds spawn)
• Using a protective ability on a healer as they're too squishy to survive a mechanic
• Assisting a healer in escaping a positional threat
• Having a situation where you can eat a mechanic to keep it from hitting the healer, sacrificing yourself to keep them alive

How far back are you going? Because I've played in multiple games, if you're in a game where the healer is dedicated to healing, then if they sacrifice DPS, then they simply aren't so fragile. If anything, I was able to stand there and take quite a bit of damage, my gear had at least as much magic defense in one case but considerably higher physical defence, the casters took the most damage. If I was responsible to keep a party alive I had the tools to do so, I had more than enough "protective abilities" as long as the DPS were using their skills- and they didn't typically have much utility.

In more complex cases, we had multiple parties, each with a tank, healer and DPS to handle mini-bosses while raiding in at least one game but they weren't "troubling the healer", they didn't specifically target healers, if necessary I could even keep myself up. It would be more an issue of "save the DPS" - they would be more likely to have run to me with something chasing them.

[HighlanderClone]

We need more fights like Barbariccia. Best fight in all of Endwalker IMO.

Shishio is another good one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix-iDGOv0rM

It's not actually completely random. There are three patterns with Thundercloud Summons, and the line AoEs are really just rapid-fire line AoEs targeting your location, but they managed to make the fight feel fresh every pull even with just this mild randomization.

[Wildheaven182]

Honestly, just add some damage around. Give healers something to heal, it's not hard. Unavoidable damage that isnt a lot but can add up if ignored. Give me something to cleanse. Not hard. Get rid of vulnerability if you have to, theres nothing to heal if people are either full hp or dead from missing 2 mechanics. Let us cleanse vulnerability. Something.

Just lazy and safe uncreative development. Theyre too scared of expecting someone who has reached level 90 to actually know how to do anything at all whatsoever.
This is a video game. If they cant press buttons in an order then let them lose.

No one cares about savage. Make it less about researching for a test and more like i dunno, playing a video game and people might play it.

Balance for the majority of content people play which is guess what, normie content. Raids are a waste of time to develop.
Dont make battle content for the lowest common denominator of plot watchers who will never like it. Then youre just making easy boring stuff that no one likes. Raider trash even say who even cares about dungeons anyway.

[Rikka_Chu]

If you think that Raids and Savage content are waste of time in MMO, then I think you mistaken games. You should be playing Second Life right now. MMO's are not about showing off your glam 100% of time, and trying to make cute screenshoots.

[Amity_Roji]

Well, I find your post interesting. I would like to add a couple of comments.

First of all- to put my comments in context, I happen to have played even longer than you, so a number of your comments are very familiar. It's always nice to see someone who's been enjoying gaming for a while.

#GreyBushGaming unite

You may remember , years ago, that casters had to sit and wait between skills? I don't think that this would be acceptable now, unless you're playing a "classic" or "Vanilla" version of a game.

I do remember, that sucked, and there's a reason it's not in game design anymore and hasn't been for a long time.

Some points I don't really relate - such as (2) That would either be a new healer, or in new content? So if I die because it's my first time in very difficult content

Not necessarily, at least not in the way I was thinking. I think back to the Mimiron fight in WoW, where there were a billion damage sources across the raid while at the same time healers needed to be exceptionally mobile. There were many times we had a DPS going low on health and desperate for a heal, and I had to make a decision between remaining mobile or casting a big heal and chose wrongly - I died, they died, and the raid wiped.

Now, I'm not saying FFXIV needs encounters like that - it (when it was current content at least) was meant to be a high-tier encounter. What I am saying is that it's a perfect illustration of how the game placed a level of importance on the healer role. It placed pressure on the healer(s) to heal to such an extent that it generated errors. It forced a choice, and I think that this is crucial to the healer role.

Same as (6) I've played other games where that was completely unnecessary outside of PvP, and 7 - do we really want that to lead to party wipes?

I think some level of return to legitimate aggro management would be a welcome change. This is really more of a tank issue - and honestly if I were a tank main I'd be striking too, because their role identity has been pretty ruined as well. I think the reason they complain less is because unlike us they do have an engaging DPS rotation to keep them busy. Also, I'm willing to let the tank issues slide a little more because historically it's been blindingly difficult to attract players to the tank role and keeping things a bit more basic makes it more accessible. Still...they may not be as broken as healers in FFXIV, but there's still some pretty serious problems with the tank role IMO.

similarly don't really want to see (5), having been in a game where healers and tanks had the worst time with needing multiple gear sets, I don't miss that AT ALL.

I used the "gear check" example just to be illustrative, but in general I think that the concept of encounters that fail because the healers couldn't generate a high enough level of output is a good thing. We have that for DPS in the form of hard enrages, so why not us? There aren't many encounters where you can take a step back and say "Ok, it is vital that our healers be on top of their game with their healing."