Healing in FFXIV vs healing in other MMOs?

[loreleidiangelo]

Recent discussions I've been having on this subforum got me thinking: how do you think Final Fantasy XIV healing holds up compared to the healing styles, mechanics, and difficulty in other MMOs?

I'll type a response when I get home, as typing on mobile sucks and I hate when my posts are laden with errors because of it, but some things to discuss in your response might be:

-how do other games fare when it comes to healer class design and diversity? Is there a neat healing gimmick that a class has in another game that you'd love to see the XIV devs borrow at some point? Alternately, do you wish other games would copy healing styles that are currently present in FFXIV?

-do you find the average skill floor of healing higher in FFXIV, or higher in other games? What about the skill ceiling? Are there any things you might suggest to improve the healer difficulty in any of the games you've played (whether by making it more or less challenging)?

-how about healer balance? How does FFXIV's healer balance hold up to other games? How responsive do you feel the developers are about listening to feedback and tuning classes? Does any game stand out in your mind as having exceptionally well-balanced healer roles where any class can excel in any environment?

-what was your most memorable healing experience, whether in this game or another one? What about it made it so memorable, and do you think it's something that can/should be replicated in FFXIV?

-of the games that you've played, which one do you think ultimately had the "best" overall healing? What made it stand out to you?



Those are just some guidelines, but realistically I'm interested in having any discussion about the comparisons between FFXIV healing and other-MMO healing, so feel free to talk about whatever you'd like. Let's keep it civil, obviously, we're not GD lol. I'll post my reply in the thread when I get home later today.

[Supersun]

10000x better than Haste, Refresh, Haste, Refresh, Haste, Refresh, Cure III, Haste, Refresh, Haste, Refresh, ect... that they had in XI >.>

[Whiteprincess]

Ground aoe dot dot dot dot filler filler filler...maybe cure1 5x In a dungeon . As a sch its fun, it lets me have lots of fun dpsing. On raid it seems some of the newer content mistakes by dps forces more healing along with more aoe forced healing. SE might be trying to force more healing which is fine.
Compared to other games its a bit lite mode on the healing time,but that depends on the party i guess.
I'm happy where its at atm i bit of lite/heavy/dps to enjoy.

[Gemina]

10000x better than Haste, Refresh, Haste, Refresh, Haste, Refresh, Cure III, Haste, Refresh, Haste, Refresh, ect... that they had in XI >.>

This was a big reason why I left XI. RDM at one point was the busiest most demanded job in the game. Rotating enfeebling magicks like slow, paralyze, blind, and dia, all the while keeping HP bars healthy, and keeping up a refresh/haste cycle and tossing an occasional nuke if there was a skillchain. I get that not everyone could do it, but to reduce arguably the most powerful job in the game to a refresh/haste bot was one of the saddest things I've seen in all of gaming.

I'll take the healing in XIV over that 10 times out of 10.

[Iromi]

Not really a fan. When I get on healer I prefer to..yanno, buff and heal. Too much dps and such with it soo I'll let someone else do it.

If I wanted to dps I rather play my smn who is much more efficient at it

I prefer cardinal in lineage 2 when comparing other mmo, balance hp was awesome

[Risvertasashi]

On the one hand, I appreciate that FFXIV even has healers. There's a trend (I'm obviously not fond of..) of them... disappearing.

On the other hand... so I have 3 or 4 hotbars of healing abilities. This isn't a bad thing, I feel the healing kits are pretty well designed. Yet its odd that I have to go to a shooter like Overwatch to actually feel like a healer. A point and click beam that actually gets used is better than dozens of abilities that are redundant outside of a very tiny, niche portion of content.

Or another way to put it: I think XIV has a very good system foundation for healing. I just wish it was put to use more.

[Fernosaur]

I haven't really played many MMOs, but the ones I have played all have had very different healing styles, for better or for worse. Ragnarok Online was a super, super busy healing job in dungeons, but it mostly just meant spamming the hell out of Heal and putting buffs up when they ran out. It was by far the most active class but it didn't mean it was particularly hard. Mabinogi was another MMO that I played for a long time, but healing during battle in that game was practically non existent, to the point that characters were healed better when they were sitting.

I really like how healing works in FFXIV. It is not particularly challenging in daily content, but for one I enjoy solo healing a lot, because it adds a bigger layer of difficulty and complexity to how you manage your tool kits. It's true what the previous poster said that you don't really use much of your tools in casual content, but raid environments, and specially solo healing circumstances really make you squeeze all you have. At least Scholar makes it so.

I also think healer balance is pretty okay, even if the classes aren't particuarly too different from each other.

[Venjamin]

My favorite healer of all time was Bard in Perfect World. Essentially, certain spells added musical notes into a layout. (C, D, or E if I remember correctly. ) When you used 3 spells to create a chord ( think C-C-D ) you gained AOE buffs that lasted for x seconds or until you played a new chord. It added a great layer of competency and decision making to your healing, because even during times when you are facing 'down time' you are preparing your next chord or setting up a good heal that won't interrupt your chord progressions, etc.

It was wicked fun and I'm super disappointed our Bards aren't as cool. xD

[Fevelle]

My main MMOs were Grand Chase and Ragnarok Online. GC healing was nearly non-existent since you could dodge boss mechanics by animation-locking yourself out of it with abilities.

Ragnarok Online on the other hand was extremely hard to heal in every aspect. No aggro table whatsoever, only AI commands - wich means MVPs could suddenly lock target on you and screw your life. At least 8 buffs to keep track in a party of 12 people with no party UI whatsoever. PVP was even harder because no way in hell you could see clearly where your guild members were. The only downside in that game was the lack of healing options. A full support would spam Heal and put Sanctuary and keep track of buffs. They made it better with more options for healing with RO renewal, but I quit just before that.

[MikeWW]

I think the combat system in FFXIV is about as fun as manning a cash register with 120 different buttons accepting a wide variety of payment methods. FFXIV was designed at the beginning to be playable with a controller, and they decided to go crazy with the amount of abilities you have, so combat is about pressing the same three buttons in a row, press F1-F8 to select party members, always standing still to cast and only moving to dodge aoe's, and then some ability buttons as part of rotation or immediately after some highly-scripted attacks or after some teammates get hit by aoe's. There's no unpredictability in FFXIV combat except whether or not your teammates are insane and stand in aoe's and whether or not lag/server lag will make aoe's hit.

Action MMO's and FPS games that are designed solely or foremost with keyboard+mouse in mind can have much more complicated targeting and movement requirements than point-and-click games. 1990's keyboard+mouse FPS games have a much more responsive and engaging combat system than many multi-platform games today, especially if they don't bombard players with 50000 different abilities and if they had good lag compensation, and a lot of them did have good lag compensation because many people still had dial-up.

And before people tell me to stop playing if I don't like it, the most enjoyment I get out of this game is crafting and decorating homes/characters.