Why healing is broken and terrible, and how to fix it...

[RichardButte]

TL;DR: Healers can and will be chastised for both choosing to DPS, or choosing NOT to DPS.

Because of the way damage works in this game (most of it is avoidable), a healer may or may not need to conserve their mana, and they won't know until the end of a fight if they should've done more damage or if they should've conserved mana because there's no way of knowing how many players are going to take avoidable damage until it either happens or doesn't.

EDIT: And to anyone insisting that doesn't happen because it's never happened to them personally (aside from that being a massive logical fallacy), there's a thread on the healer forums RIGHT NOW asking healers why they don't DPS:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-who-don-t-DPS

That one is polite about it, but not everyone is. :P



Here's how the different types of classes in FFXIV currently play:

Tanks: Constantly run through your rotation to maintain aggro and the best mitigation you can.

DPS: Constantly run through your rotation to do the best damage you can.

Healers: Let regen tick on the tank (who's taking a trickle of auto attack damage from the boss) while you either press your few DPS buttons, or conserve mana in case a DPS screws up and gets hit by an AoE.

All this while you wait for the next tank buster or unavoidable AoE that will take you 1-2 casts to completely recover from so you can go back to deciding to conserve mana or pushing a few DPS buttons.

BTW, you have an equal chance of being yelled at for DPSing or NOT DPSing, because maybe no one gets hit and you should've been DPSing the entire time, or maybe several people will get hit (even due to lag) and you're going to go OOM because you DPSed!

You have no way of knowing which was the right answer until after the fight. Have fun, healers!

Angry sarcasm aside, it all boils down to how damage is dealt to players in this game and how potent healing spells are (ie one oGCD heals 50%+ of a tank's HP so we can get right back to DPSing).

Damage either comes out in a trickle, or a deluge. Compare this to other MMOs where tanks take steady damage that healers need to constantly be healing through "maintenance rotations" that allow the healer to make interesting and engaging decisions on how they want to spend resources.

FFXIV is the only MMO I've ever played where healers are basically "Green DPS": they spend ~20% of their time healing and the other 80% dealing damage or standing there to regenerate mana. This is why I gave up my level 70 AST: once I had all of the cardplay down to muscle memory, it became clear just how bland and uninteresting healing is.

And before anyone says, "BUT SAVAGE OR SUPER SAVAGE!!!", no, you should not need to get to literally the hardest content in the entire game before healers become anything but green DPS.

My suggestions to potentially fix this, in order of most likely to happen to least:

1. Make healer damaging abilities either next to free (I'm talking like 10mp at level 70, here) or cost TP instead (since healers have a TP bar for literally no friggin' reason whatsoever).

2. Make healer DPS interact with healing in some fun way, like X% of all damage healers do is refunded to them as mana, making DPSing a net gain in mana, meaning healers are never again going to get chastised for DPSing and running out of mana, no longer having to worry that DPSing is going to spend the mana they were going to need when 3 DPS suddenly screw up and stand in the bad.

3. Make damage come out more consistently and give healers rotations like those of DPS where you're constantly pressing buttons that combo into fun decisions, like using a mana-regenerating ability attached to a weaker heal, but at very least, healers will always be pressing our buttons to HEAL instead being green DPS.

Please, ANY of the above would be better than being a green DPS with the lingering paranoia of going OOM. I've hung up my globe for a gun at this point. I don't even care that MCH is bottom of the barrel on damage parsing because, you know what? The rotation is fun and engaging.

Make healing the same and I'm sure you'll see more healers in queues as a result.

[AlexanderThorolund]

Why healing is broken and terrible, and how to fix it...

Said no one, ever.

[RichardButte]

Why healing is broken and terrible, and how to fix it...

Said no one, ever.

I just said it, and I know I'm not alone. :P

[Odd]

This is the only game I've ever enjoyed healing in. Removing Cleric Stance made it even more enjoyable. I'm not alone in that mentality, either.

But in the spirit of the thread, all of your ideas would lead to healers being OP.

[Coatl]

Honestly I agree and it's been a major complaint of mine for awhile. The dungeons in this game completely baby you as a healer to the point you have little to no responsibility to uphold. I think if I made two macros, one to auto follow and one to cast medica, I could complete most dungeons while not even looking at the screen.

This creates healers who cannot bend under pressure and so when they try to do things outside of their small comfort zone they simply break.

[RichardButte]

But in the spirit of the thread, all of your ideas would lead to healers being OP.

1 and 3 are literally how healers have played in other MMOs with 0 issue.

And all #1 would do is remove the "guesswork" when it comes to healers choosing to DPS because you're accounting for something you cannot know ahead of time.

Maybe you won't need that mana because the none of the DPS screw up and no one takes any avoidable damage, or maybe you WILL need that mana because a few of them DO screw up or lag and get hit.

Point is, you have absolutely no way of knowing until the fight is over whether or not you needed that mana.

[ManuelBravo]

I don't think healing is broken, seems to be pretty reasonable compare to other games. If anything the players that think are healers are broken. Either they don't know their role, or panic and use up their MP too fast. They forget their main role, TO HEAL, while we appreciate the dpsing ( in lower dungeons ) we rather live than die. If you can help great if not don't pressure your self.

[RichardButte]

I don't think healing is broken, seems to be pretty reasonable compare to other games. If anything the players that think are healers are broken. Either they don't know their role, or panic and use up their MP too fast. They forget their main role, TO HEAL, while we appreciate the dpsing ( in lower dungeons ) we rather live than die. If you can help great if not don't pressure your self.

The problem is that healers in this game are put in a situation where they could LITERALLY get chastised for not DPSing, OR for DPSing, and it all depends upon how many times the players in the group screw up and get hit with avoidable damage, which is something you cannot predict and therefore cannot plan around.

Even the best players in the world have lag spikes from time to time (especially with all the DDoS attacks lately). The game is effectively asking healers to predict the future, and that really shouldn't be how healing plays out.

[loreleidiangelo]

I think you're gonna get a lot of immediate and defensive reactions just from the title of your thread, OP. Using the term "broken" when healing in this game objectively is working for the content that we have is a little hyperbolic, IMO. You might not like it or think it's how healer gameplay should be, but "broken" generally implies that it's too OP or UP such to the point that it completely throws all semblance of game balance out the window.

It also makes people who DO like how healers play in this game reflexively want to dismiss your discussion outright since no one likes being told the thing that they enjoy is busted.

[RichardButte]

I think you're gonna get a lot of immediate and defensive reactions just from the title of your thread, OP. Using the term "broken" when healing in this game objectively is working for the content that we have is a little hyperbolic, IMO. You might not like it or think it's how healer gameplay should be, but "broken" generally implies that it's too OP or UP such to the point that it completely throws all semblance of game balance out the window.

It also makes people who DO like how healers play in this game reflexively want to dismiss your discussion outright since no one likes being told the thing that they enjoy is busted.

In hindsight, I should've had it say "Healing is a guessing game", but I can't edit thread titled, because you're clearly right about people becoming immediately defensive (probably without even reading the post, sigh...).