Tinfoil Hat Time! A new Lens to Look at Healer Changes!

[EaMett]

I really doubt budget had anything to do with healers. especially since all they really did was remove things that were fun and adjusted potencies. AST was the only class they really messed around with. it feels like they cut them down so the leveling field was the same in order to build them up again in the next xpac. I feel like I am playing 2.0 healers again.

I mean. It's part way in your answer. Balance through homogenization is a bad design move in general (baring some types of games). It most definitely wasn't the best move they could make so it's born either from a desire to fix things quickly (less work, cheaper costs) or is the result of not understanding healers / imposing for some meta concept.

[CaesarCV]

In general they always seem to have taken the simplest, easiest route when it comes to 'balancing' the healers. They had trouble figuring out how to balance the cards so they just made them the same. They had trouble balancing Eos and Selene so they just made them the same. They had trouble balancing Healer DPS so they just made them the same. Despite supposedly not making a new Healer job so that they could spend more time on fixing and balancing the existing ones the team seems to have taken a great many shortcuts.

[ZaqueXIII]

I think from the lens of healing needed so far in SHB, the minor healing buff across the board and expansion of healing kit was necessary. What is disturbing about the changes to me is that SE doesnt appear trust healers enough to give them a kit to defend themselves and then make MSQ and Job quest have us fight things with our stripped and gutted kit. Its unfortunate but hopefully they will remedy it for all healers in a near future patch now that everyones healing has been brought in line. Also WHM party damage increase when? Like all they had to do was make afflatus misery a debuff and bam all the healers have a similar kit and levels of usefulness.

[Stamps]

I think from the lens of healing needed so far in SHB, the minor healing buff across the board and expansion of healing kit was necessary.

In my experience, the expanded healing kit is only necessary if you're interested in doing dps. That's the baffling bit.

In expert roulette, for example, with wall to wall pulls, I still spend ~60% of my time spamming Art of War when paired with the average tank. That's because I am utilizing our new abilities like Seraph and Recitation (and the busted new SS). But they're entirely unnecessary if my goal was to simply keep the tank alive.

It's why, SE, I am confusion. You give us all these admittedly nice healing abilities; you take away most of our damage kit; we take those new healing abilities and properly utilize them; proper utilization leads to healers DPSing for a large part of their time in group content. So we're still DPSing the same amount, healing a bit more, but are all the more bored for it because we spam 1 button.

[fogboundturtle]

In my experience, the expanded healing kit is only necessary if you're interested in doing dps. That's the baffling bit.

In expert roulette, for example, with wall to wall pulls, I still spend ~60% of my time spamming Art of War when paired with the average tank. That's because I am utilizing our new abilities like Seraph and Recitation (and the busted new SS). But they're entirely unnecessary if my goal was to simply keep the tank alive.

It's why, SE, I am confusion. You give us all these admittedly nice healing abilities; you take away most of our damage kit; we take those new healing abilities and properly utilize them; proper utilization leads to healers DPSing for a large part of their time in group content. So we're still DPSing the same amount, healing a bit more, but are all the more bored for it because we spam 1 button.

So is the solution to nerf tank so healers spend more time healing and less dpsing ?

[RegularJoe]

So is the solution to nerf tank so healers spend more time healing and less dpsing ?

It's better than what we have now. If they want us to heal, then they should adjust content to reflect that. The main issue as always is twofold: Healing is extremely powerful and incoming damage is almost always a non-issue. The only time healers are stuck in a pure healing role is when progressing through Raids for the first few times. All the other times, healers have been and still are Green dps classes, with healing utility on the side.

Throw up your regens and shields, combined with the Tank defensive cooldowns and healers have nothing to do for the next 5-10 (sometimes 30) seconds. So, to fill the lull, you dps; the game encourages this. We have so many oGCDs, Cure, Physick, and unaspected Benefic spells aren't used 99% of the time, unless you are new to healing - and I mean new as in early leveling, because you don't have your oGCDs yet. Except for Free Cure and Critical Benefic, all the healers job-oriented mechanics revolve around our oGCDs.

The last thing we needed was more healing if the general content difficulty was going to remain the same. And because we now have less buttons to push during our downtime, things get boring pretty fast. If you're a WHM, you don't even have to worry about the tradeoff of MP management between healing and dps spam. If you're SCH and AST, you have to be slightly more restrictive with your AoE spam; not that it matters too much.

So, we're stuck between worlds here. Does FFXIV want us to focus solely on healing, when the mechanics actively discourages using actual healing spells, but instead wants us to use our myriad oGCD heals? Or do we dps with our 2 button spam, if we're lucky to have 2 buttons to push?

I'd be fine with being solo heals, and perhaps having dps skills restricted to solo play, but the group content needs to reflect that. I originally went into healing because I like healing and support roles, but Healer mains have always been given conflicting signals due to the inherent design philosophy of FFXIV and expectations of their role. Are we heal bots? Or are we dps in disguise? FFXIV wants range as support, so we can't be that.

[LegoTechnic]

So, we're stuck between worlds here. Does FFXIV want us to focus solely on healing, when the mechanics actively discourages using actual healing spells, but instead wants us to use our myriad oGCD heals? Or do we dps with our 2 button spam, if we're lucky to have 2 buttons to push?

Let me answer this question. There's a Healer role quest chain in Shadowbringers. The very first thing it asks you to do is DPS down a bear that hits like a soft, wet noodle.

[Alathon]

So is the solution to nerf tank so healers spend more time healing and less dpsing ?

The solution is to look at the situation in a more productive way. Healers being combatants when not healing is a good thing. It creates a beneficial incentive to the rest of the party to do mechanics, use cooldowns, and otherwise avoid damage: healer(s) being able to add damage and clear faster (or at all, if you're up against an enrage timer). A great many players have enjoyed this mechanic. Several hundred hours of FFXIV content can (sometimes, must) be played solo, which means Healer classes doing damage. The desire of a small minority of Sylphies to have FFXIV copy other MMOs shitty whack-a-mole healing should not be pandered to.

From that axiom, one can then examine ways to make playing healer classes fun. That can include things such as adding interaction between healer damage and heal abilities (ex: WHM Lilies and afflatus spells), re-adding things that used to work (SCH damage rotation), adding ways for a healer to buff party damage on GCD in place of spamming damage spells, and a whole lot of other ideas.

The appropriate goal is to convince employees at SE with decision-making authority that they have erred in their current direction for healers. It's that's simple. Their current direction reflects genuine incompetence: they have failed to improve two out of three healer classes in the eyes of a preponderance of those classes' players, they have failed to make healers "focus more on healing", it appears they have failed to balance healers for raids (though the jury is still out), and they have failed to admit these failures and begin course correction. What must happen is for them to admit their error and correct their actions.

Though, we should probably leave out words like 'incompetent' when addressing them directly.

[BahamutxD]

Everytime I go to bed and think about healers as a role being like they are in 5.0 I fall sleep in tears.

[CrazyAce]

Everytime I go to bed and think about healers as a role being like they are in 5.0 I fall sleep in tears.

Likewise. They're all so bad now. I mean, AST is amazing in terms of healing in general, but it BORES me to tears. I want to have to actually think while I'm healing.

I've said this before but I'll say it again: If I wanted to play a class where I just turned off my brain I'd just play my RDM. Actually, if the RDM got an AOE heal it would be almost as effective as the SCH post-nerf.