The Healer Problem in PVP

[Heliantheae]

From my personal experience, the problem with heals is that a SAM with a coin beside their name generates more aggro than a WHM with a chest beside their name. That coupled with the fact you need coordination and teamwork to take one down is a recipe for a bad time.

[Sunako]

Can't edit on mobile.

Let me add that I absolutely support adding a healing debuff that is able to be applied by dps as long as its massive (75%) with no diminishing returns whatsoever on the duration.

Also, you are wrong about other mmo's. In history throughout WoW and swtor there were healers that were legitimately overpowered and required an entire team to take them down. But if there was another healer on the team cross healing them? It was impossible, the CC durations were not long enough to keep them locked down.

Healing reduction was 75% before. During 2.0 summoner could do 50% with miasma and marauder/warr was another 50% that make it impossible heal. I can show you how balanced it was back in day. Average match take under 2min.

I have old picture from it. I played over 2k matches in 2.0 that game mode died like after month.

[Khalithar]

Snip

I'm not sure of the context of the screenshot or why you're posting it. Is it just to prove you PVP'd a lot back then? Alright I believe you, now what's your point? That because healers were too weak the mode died? There's really no evidence of that. It could be other factors, maybe most people that liked FFXIV weren't in to PVP as much? Maybe they found that mode boring? Maybe the rewards weren't compelling enough to get people to stick around after they got what they wanted?

Also, let me ask you this, you say with a 75% debuff healers were too weak, giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that is the case, how about healers where there was no debuff present? Additionally, even if healers were still killable without the debuff back then, it is a different game now. How the game was back then is largely irrelevant as the design has evolved over time.

[Sunako]

snip

What i mean it was impossible heal that damage once healing reductions was 75%. Only what make games last little longer was lustrate and bene because those skills was % of max hp. However even lustrate is changes now and it is potency instead % so it would not ignore healing reductions anymore. In my opinion it was insanely overpowered and stupid it also nerfed to 20% very soon. Imagine if healers current 5k heals turned into 1250 heals? it would be impossible keep anybody alive and healers would be useless at that point and it would not be even fun. That picture show I have seen it how it was before and it make no sense have it 75%. Also if you want dps be more valuable I think better idea would be make the team that have more overall damage done win the game in the end of the match.

[KusoWat]

A common misconception is that as a role, healers are overpowered. This just simply isn't the case.

Healers don't climb so high because they are insanely powerful, they do so because the disparity in effectiveness between a skilled healer and one more green is massive. Plat vs silver, diamond vs gold, you almost never see two good healers face off against each other.

The main reason for this is that healing is extremely difficult, with 4v4 Feast healing being arguably the most difficult content in the game. This deters people from playing it and those that do are nowhere near as good as the veterans they are forced to go up against. They have a very low skill floor and a very high ceiling.

So again, the issue is not that healers are too powerful, it is that they are too difficult to play which leads to massive gaps in skill.

[Mantrus]

snip.

I addressed this in the main post. It's both that they're too powerful/influential and that they have a large skill cap. If they just had a high skill cap, then even if a diamond healer were better than the platinum healer in a match, the diamond tank or DPS on the other team should be able to carry the match as much as the healer. In this case, healers wouldn't have so much higher win rates than other roles like they do now.

Healer skill caps are higher than other roles, but if one role gets more influence at it's max performance than the other, then it has more influence, plain and simple.

[Zojha]

A common misconception is that as a role, healers are overpowered. This just simply isn't the case.

This just simply is the case, hence why limit break, culling time and medal stacks exist in the first place. That's why a platinum DPS doesn't weigh as heavy as a platinum healer. That's why skill differences between healers matter a lot more than skill differences between tanks or DPS. That's why entire burst rotations of DPS barely deal around as much damage as a single Cure II can heal.

Power times Skill = Impact. Healers get more impact per skill because they have more power. And they have more power because SE doesn't balance them as one out of four equal team members, but against a melee, a ranged and a tank combined, aka the standard Feast comp. Their power is tuned to vie with the power of three other people and therefore by nature is higher than each of the other roles.

That is barely functional in Ranked due to the enforced teamcomp. In modes without an enforced teamcomp, it leads to teams without healers having significantly lower chances to win against teams with.

[Cynric]

snip

This right here is literally hitting the nail on the head. As DPS we can not have anywhere near the level of influence healers have. If we did have that influence we could sustain our win rates a lot more. But if you get a bad healer its instant death, if you get a good healer the game will last its entirety and people will hardly die.

If healing on one side is better than the other, generally that side will be the winner. I don't think DPS should be able to smack a healer to death but something has to give, between blackest night, adlo,protect, bene,lustrate, fairy, cover,etc. Healers have far too much synergy with tanks towards preventing damage and healing any other damage back.

While DPS shouldn't be able to just kill someone by smashing buttons, healers shouldn't be able to create situations that practically force culling time every match.

Then to top off the matter, our damage just isn't anywhere near what healing can be done in comparison. We all require resources for our burst, some of us require more than others, once we dump those resources they have to be rebuilt, but they're usually going to be healed off or stopped, then we just repeat the process.

Many DPS players have switched to healers and achieved better results than when they played DPS. That's kind of a problem. The role is far to dominant on every leaderboard for there not to be an obvious problem.

[KusoWat]

That's why entire burst rotations of DPS barely deal around as much damage as a single Cure II can heal.

I think you need to check your math.

[KusoWat]

I addressed this in the main post. It\\'s both that they\\'re too powerful/influential and that they have a large skill cap. If they just had a high skill cap,.

I just want to single out this excerpt to make sure everyone understands. It is not the cap, or skill ceiling that is the issue, it is the GAP between the ceiling and the floor.

It used to be true for other jobs as well before the 4.0 rework, but dps has become so grossly simplified that you can barely tell the difference between an average dps and a top 10 player.

It is because the difference in skill between the other roles is not nearly as impactful when compared to that between healers. The gap is way smaller. That is the issue.