Every problem with the current iteration of healers.

[Billythepancake]

I think it's fair to say that many of us here on the forums, myself included, are unhappy and upset over the current iteration of healers. I know there are several threads talking about healer issues already, but my goal is to put every single healer issue into one thread and not have them split onto separate threads.

A couple of things that I do ask though:
Please be specific, don't just say something along the lines of "healers are boring now and I don't like them", not saying I disagree with such a statement, but it doesn't tell me anything, tell me why you don't like healers right now, be as clear and detailed as you can. Tell me about specific classes as well, tell me why SCH is boring, why AST sucks, and, especially, WHMs I want to hear specifics as to WHY WHM isn't as good as people want to think it is. I also ask when you tell me a problem, give me a solution as well, tell me what can be done to fix it.

Second point: please do not use this thread as a means of debates with others, I believe there are plenty of threads where people on both sides have argued with each other. I'm asking you here to talk to me, and only to me. If someone responds to you, or you see they respond to someone else, just ignore it. I can think of one person in particular that will attempt to bring toxicity to this thread and try to turn it into something that it isnt. If that does happen, just ignore and move on, I don't want a snowball effect.

Last point: if you have any positives, I want to hear those as well. As much as I dont enjoy the current healers myself, I'd be remiss to say that they messed up everything, and I have positives to say myself. Tell me, and again only me, what some of these positives are, what draws you to your healing class? Again, do be specific, I want details.

I want every healers perspective, but as a scholar main myself, I'm most interested in what AST and especially WHM have to say, because I know what the issues with SCH are by heart, but I'm not as well versed in the other two.

[YusiKha]

Most of all what I find is that there’s a large disconnect with our kits as a whole. Very few things interact with each other aside from gating a resource, and the things that do interact have the same consequence (ie aetherflow healing giving more healing via the fey gauge, horoscope proccing healing from more healing).
As well as several underwhelming interactions (only union and blessing using gauge) and straight up un-interactions (Seraph can’t use blessing, union, or be dissipated, neutral Sect only affects GCDs)

We don’t really have an incentive to use our entire healing kit outside of getting more DPS spells out in a fight, which has been made boring by reducing the thought required.

[Lodi]

Why I play healer (in general):

I want to be a fighter like everyone else, while making the group's health my responsibility. That's what I do in most games, I want to be part of the fight and at the same time take care of my teammates.
It's a balance between offense and support that I absolutely love to practice, because it feels rewarding to be a good support while actively partaking in a fight.


Why I don't want to play healer anymore in FFXIV:

1- Too much healing downtime, and too predictable damage. WAY too much. To the point where even in savages I'll spend 75% of my time just mindlessly attacking.

2- A ridiculously simple damage rotation, that doesn't change with my level. I end up pressing the same button over and over, from level 1 to 80.

3- Disappointing levelups. Every content plays the same except the higher it is, the more healing OGCDs I have, the less GCD healing I need to do, the more time I spend pressing the same button.

4- Being told to deal with it by everyone. Players telling us our healing kit is fine even though we want more dps skills. Devs pushing changes on us without asking, and then blatantly ignoring us when we try to offer feedback.

5- As YusiKha above mentioned, absolutely no synergies between our skills, and little originality. We could use them all in a random order and get the same results everytime, and everything is a variant of ST heal or AOE heal, with perhaps added regen or shields.

[FIDOISHERE]

All healers are lacking in this current expansion. they wanted us to heal more but they didn't get the entirety of each healers kit just right for this type of change. YES the can all heal just fine. scholar being an odd ball needing a potency change on a couple things but its still relatively easy.

White mage Personally speaking they've got it all besides party buffs. the damage is great. the Healing is great. what they do need however and which i feel like the only real problems are. they need more Party support. and the lilies need to be taken off GCD, and there needs to be other ways to expend their extra lilies if they want to use their blood lily faster and or want to use one before the gauge resets.

Simply put lets get another party based buff may it be single or AOE and the cost of a lily. why type of buff im not entirely sure its hard to provide a buff with how the current balance of the healers are and how the Damage dealers get more damage. i don't want to offset the balance even further here. the only thing that keeps coming to mind is some sort of single target Player buff that gives a small damage reduction buff. that or maybe just get a DoT out of it. nothing crazy maybe like a 15-20 second one.

God i don't know where to start on these other two without someone flipping a tit or two.

[FIDOISHERE]

As for Scholar.. For being the weaker healer for healing and more shield based. they are lacking the healing potency in many areas, as well as the dps front being being a lil clunky and risky and easily punishable toward their healing. the fairies are pointless the potency heal of embrace is too low, yes its a perm Regen bascially. but their AOE regen does not compare to WHM or AST and their single target regen.

their dps kit took a hit. which im not too mad about. but they also took away the fairy kit which we have less to do then they nerfed the hell out of the fairy heal trying to make us heal with already weaker healing kit...

Weaker heals, Less support abilites, less Dps, all around undertuned.

give them miasma 2 back, make it cost a aether flow stack, cooldown 30 seconds. make it a burst on hit then let it leave a dot behind AOE. boom more damage another dot all in one. also make it ranged casted not close.

Fairies...

keep 1 get rid of the other for /glamour summon. or turn Selene into a DD fairy that attacks when you do like the Trance summons from smn. nothing over tuned just simple dot based damage to go with your broils or ED's ruin 2's let her use the same fairy skills having the same effects.

Embrace needs a potency buff to keep up with the current content. 3k is not enough 5k is plenty. so 150 to 200/250?

We need the AOE esuna back and AOE quicken, if possible the silence (im not fussed about that one though..) make the cooldowns longer. have them cost fairy gauge. let us spend the gauge on some thing else rather than aetherpact and blessing.


physic just needs a 50 potency buff and it'll be fine.

i feel like getting just those small changes will make scholar feel better that fairy potency increase and physic alone is enough to keep the tank up a bit longer and getting the extra fairy skills back will let us expend out gauge more during boss fights. the DD selene idea is very unlikely but it adds a full time DoT to our kit with still being able to use the fairy skills letting us adjust to more damage if need be and it dosen't risk us not being able to do our jobs.


however a lot of this is my opinion.. and i think others can make a better worded/shorter posts with either the same if not much better idea's. personally i feel like this is whats wrong with them and what i think can help by not going too far back and not going too far out of SE's vision of healers right now.

[FIDOISHERE]

Astro's Healing is actually pretty good. it feels great. it feels rewarding almost. what they currently lack is MP regen for their shield stance which takes a lot out of them and even if they want to contribute with Damage dealing. their current reworks of cards does not need a reversal. We are intended to heal more thus less damage from us healers as a whole handing out a card thats always a Damage buff is need not just a want. However in saying this. the card system feels a bit clunky. and the redraw mechanic and trying to optimize your divination is NOT fun. its a chore. they are way to occupied with their cards half the time trying to get the most out of them.

so what needs to be done? simple. some gentleman had a great idea over in the Astrologian thread in terms of a Solar, Lunar and Celestial draw method having more control over the cards you can draw. while they share recast timers. this guy has the right idea. because you can still get all 3 Symbols going for AOE buffs, this might be the possible best way to get the old card buffs back. but they said they wont bring them back.. so.. lets try and slam an idea on the table. i think the new draw idea from ty_taurus (#559 post over in http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...cussion/page56 good suggestion imo) should be used. 1 its still more control then we currently have. 2 we need different playing methods. Spire and Ewer should give mana back flat out, Balance and Spear should give a critical buff, Bole and arrow should be healing based (kinda the same from his post but just less added effects) . 1 this gives control to us if we need an extra spot heal at a moments notice or if we need mana back BAD, then the crit buff is an added bonus. we still get our symbols set for divination while we play our cards differently for that damage buff. i wish i could come up with better names rather then call it Defensive play and Offensive play. Defensive play giving all of the effects i mentioned earlier while Offensive play gives Astrologians other options for instant/Free cast Attacks. just like the old Lord card did. Spire and Ewer Should be Celestial strike for single target, Balance and spear Solar burn for a Dot, Bole and Arrow Lunar burst for AOE.

IMO, i think that would fix things if not definitely what ty_taurus said in his post.

[Nhala_Levee]

Astro's Healing is actually pretty good. it feels great. it feels rewarding almost. what they currently lack is MP regen for their shield stance which takes a lot out of them and even if they want to contribute with Damage dealing. their current reworks of cards does not need a reversal. We are intended to heal more thus less damage from us healers as a whole handing out a card thats always a Damage buff is need not just a want. However in saying this. the card system feels a bit clunky. and the redraw mechanic and trying to optimize your divination is NOT fun. its a chore. they are way to occupied with their cards half the time trying to get the most out of them.

so what needs to be done? simple. some gentleman had a great idea over in the Astrologian thread in terms of a Solar, Lunar and Celestial draw method having more control over the cards you can draw. while they share recast timers. this guy has the right idea. because you can still get all 3 Symbols going for AOE buffs, this might be the possible best way to get the old card buffs back. but they said they wont bring them back.. so.. lets try and slam an idea on the table. i think the new draw idea from ty_taurus (#559 post over in http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...cussion/page56 good suggestion imo) should be used. 1 its still more control then we currently have. 2 we need different playing methods. Spire and Ewer should give mana back flat out, Balance and Spear should give a critical buff, Bole and arrow should be healing based (kinda the same from his post but just less added effects) . 1 this gives control to us if we need an extra spot heal at a moments notice or if we need mana back BAD, then the crit buff is an added bonus. we still get our symbols set for divination while we play our cards differently for that damage buff. i wish i could come up with better names rather then call it Defensive play and Offensive play. Defensive play giving all of the effects i mentioned earlier while Offensive play gives Astrologians other options for instant/Free cast Attacks. just like the old Lord card did. Spire and Ewer Should be Celestial strike for single target, Balance and spear Solar burn for a Dot, Bole and Arrow Lunar burst for AOE.

IMO, i think that would fix things if not definitely what ty_taurus said in his post.

You cant be serious. AST is a trash, the most useless character in the whole game right now. And not even fun but boring as hell and its cards are just cant do anything. I think you didnt played the real Astrologian class.

[kartana]

Lodi summed it up pretty well.

Too much scripted damage output, which leads to:
Not enough to heal. And a
Simple damage rotation which doesn't make up for it.

[DawnSolaria]

Lodi summed it up pretty well.

Too much scripted damage output, which leads to:
Not enough to heal. And a
Simple damage rotation which doesn't make up for it.

Which unless they change the 2.5 gcd it will be hard to implement consecutive spike aoe damage. I was thinking something along the lines of more mechanic that deals consistent aoe damage to the raid, ones that will oom healer unless they use all their skills properly. I do believe healers heal skills are generally decently designed, so if they refuse to improve dps rotation because they don't want healer to do 2 roles at once, then at least make healong harder/more interesting

[Deceptus]

Lodi summed it up pretty well.

Too much scripted damage output, which leads to:
Not enough to heal. And a
Simple damage rotation which doesn't make up for it.

Pretty much this.

SE wants us to heal more but won't increase incoming damage enough to do it because the casual playerbase can't handle anything remotely difficult. See: Steps of Faith, Shinryu normal.