The Healer Double Standard

[HyoMinPark]

In savage and ultimate, they rely on instant kill aoe, to keep it interesting for healers.

OHKO mechanics don’t make anything interesting for healers because no matter how hard you try, you cannot heal a one-shot. And people blame healers all the time for dying to OHKOs without realizing that, no matter how hard they heal, if you take more damage than your maximum HP pool, no amount of heal spam will save you. Savage and Ultimate both are primarily mitigation checks, which fails on the entire party. They aren’t heal checks, and any “healing checks” are primarily limited to early Savage prog when people are in minimum item level gear. In DRU, there are mechanics where if the tank misses Reprisal or a DPS doesn’t Addle, people flat out die. Healers can’t do anything about that. The heal check ends once you figure out the minimum HP people need to survive, and more times than not, HoTs or one of a healer’s OP AOE heal nukes will take care of the minimum healing requirement.

I feel similarly about “heal to full or people will die/something bad will happen” mechanics (Heartless Archangel in O8S, White Hole in O4S, Cleansing Strike in Orbonne’s TGC). It just promotes mindless heal spam until everyone is full HP, and overhealing (which will always be pointless because you cannot heal more than 100% of someone’s HP) because that one DPS will be missing a smidge of health due to healing and healing Crit variances. Mechanics like that prove that the developers simply don’t know how to make healing interesting.

I think it would be a good idea if they add a damage buff when your Hp is above a certain percentage.
And a dps debuff when the Hp drops below.

This is also a bad idea. All it would do is promote mindless healing just like heal-to-full mechanics. It doesn’t make healing interesting when you have to just mindlessly press your AOE heals.

Then there is more to it than just staying alive, it will give the Hp more meaning and it will give barrier healers more responsibility.

I don’t deny that barriers have minimal use in most content outside of Jimmy has 4 vuln stacks and one *may or may not* save him from the incoming raidwide; but it seems like the general direction developers are taking mitigative responsibility falls into non-barrier AOE mitigation. Not shields. To be honest, I can go entire runs in most content without once touching Adlo/E.Diag or Succor/E.Prog because they simply aren’t needed. Especially if people are on-point with mitigation (when it matters—which is, sadly, not often enough). The only times I’ve found barriers 100% necessary are in week 1 Savage prog and Ultimate. In regular content, though? Not even necessary. Things simply don’t hit hard enough.

Ended up searching to see if other people were disillusioned with how healer roles play and wow this has been going on for years. On one hand I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling this, but on the other hand it's pretty abysmal that SE can't/won't address this.

The sad fact of the matter is that they care far more with making healing as braindead simple as possible for those who say “it’s too hard!” Or to try and bring more people into the role, as opposed to listening to veteran healers when it comes to legitimate complaints and keeping the veterans satisfied with the role they’ve played for years. They don’t even offer “more advanced” healers for those who want more. All 4 healers are the same healer with different coats of paint.

It’s getting to the point where most jobs and roles are like this. Accessibility is fine to a point, but the devs have taken it so far that jobs within a role all play similarly, and they have lost any nuance or complexity that once made them engaging or interesting or just different within the role. I watched it happen with the physical ranged, and I’ve watched it happen to the healers.

[MintnHoney]

no matter how hard you try, you cannot heal a one-shot.

But don't worry, I'm sure there are quite a few Sylphies still trying to find a way to do it.

[AmiableApkallu]

In savage and ultimate, they rely on instant kill aoe, to keep it interesting for healers.

I think it would be a good idea if they add a damage buff when your Hp is above a certain percentage.
And a dps debuff when the Hp drops below.

Then there is more to it than just staying alive, it will give the Hp more meaning and it will give barrier healers more responsibility.

I'd say that what makes healing interesting is unpredictability, which currently is primarily a function of the party you happen to find yourself in. Furthermore, healing is a response to what the combat environment throws at the party; a healing kit can be only as interesting as the combat environment.

Taken together, I'd like to see more unpredictability in combat: More mechanics, more variations to those mechanics, none of them according to a fixed script. Then, we can see how class designs need to adapt (or not…).

[LifeupOmega]

Ended up searching to see if other people were disillusioned with how healer roles play and wow this has been going on for years. On one hand I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling this, but on the other hand it's pretty abysmal that SE can't/won't address this.

[Supersnow845]

Ended up searching to see if other people were disillusioned with how healer roles play and wow this has been going on for years. On one hand I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling this, but on the other hand it's pretty abysmal that SE can't/won't address this.

Yep the healers are an absolute mess since stromblood finished and square does not seem the least bit interested in fixing them, it’s annoying but if you absolutely want to heal I don’t think 14 is the best and if you care more about 14 ditch healing, it’s about the only way they will ever listen, by grinding the game to a halt due to lack of healers

[Hezhi]

ShB made me quit SCH even tho I used to love the job. It's like they don't realize there are different healers and they could all play different, with WHM already having that glare + aero playstyle for those who wanted an easier option, the situation has not changed in years, what are they doing? Why even have different jobs? Currently healing in XIV is literally the most boring in any current MMO bar none. I still remember them skimming over the healer slides in live letter when they decided to gut the entire role out of nowhere.

[Supersnow845]

ShB made me quit SCH even tho I used to love the job. It's like they don't realize there are different healers and they could all play different, with WHM already having that glare + aero playstyle for those who wanted an easier option, the situation has not changed in years, what are they doing? Why even have different jobs? Currently healing in XIV is literally the most boring in any current MMO bar none. I still remember them skimming over the healer slides in live letter when they decided to gut the entire role out of nowhere.

I remember when they had list of removed actions and it was like

-bane
-miasma 2
-miasma 1
-shadowflare
-fey wind
-fey covenant
-silent dusk
-fey caress
-rouse
-legresse

And we were all like “are you going to leave us with anything at all”

[GoatOfWar]

I remember when they had list of removed actions and it was like

-bane
-miasma 2
-miasma 1
-shadowflare
-fey wind
-fey covenant
-silent dusk
-fey caress
-rouse
-legresse

And we were all like “are you going to leave us with anything at all”

No, because your inferior healer brain can not handle a basic damage rotation /s

[Renascent]

I completely stopped playing healer after shb too when it was pretty much all i played before, Since then i hopped from groups to groups and i had never met one Healer that was happy about theirs jobs.
Not one.
You are all saint for keeping up playing those boring ass jobs, like really.


That being said, it's my opinion really but i think the double standards is not really true they'll completely ignore every groups that they consider "a minority" when they change somethings on a job, and always, always look at the "bigger picture".
They just always considered healers that want more engaging gameplay as a minority (maybe they have data from casual engagement to back them up or some others stuff who know).
To compare even if by some miracle they bring back kaiten it'll be because there was enough of a outcry about it that'll all.

[UOdhn]

I'd say that what makes healing interesting is unpredictability, which currently is primarily a function of the party you happen to find yourself in. Furthermore, healing is a response to what the combat environment throws at the party; a healing kit can be only as interesting as the combat environment.

Taken together, I'd like to see more unpredictability in combat: More mechanics, more variations to those mechanics, none of them according to a fixed script. Then, we can see how class designs need to adapt (or not…).

Unpredictable damage (skills on timers rather than on a script) is indeed part of what made healing fun in other games. While you can track the timers (looking at you, WoW), the order in which a boss uses skills once the cooldowns are over are random. It's this unpredictable nature of damage that adds to healer gameplay, for the most part. It may not be the be-all end-all argument, but it's there.

However, the healers for FFXIV have kits that aren't designed for that kind of gameplay style. We've had one fight that was on timers, not a script (Urth's Fount if memory serves). So I'd agree that if we had more unscripted fights, healers would need an overhaul.

Honestly, I'd like to see the removal of homogenization among the healers. As it is, all of my abilities are on the same slots no matter what healer I'm on. Medica II is on Aspected Benefic is on Physis II is on Whispering Dawn. They all have basically the same function, and it's not the only similar skill or spell between them.