Why is FFXIV Tuned to Discourage Healing?

[HappyHubris]

So, I've healed in a lot of MMOs, and it can be both a fun and rewarding role. When your party or raid is in a tough spot and you deftly weave together lifegiving abilities to get them across the finish line you get an amazing rush! This kind of healing is prevalent when first learning content: you're undergeared, everyone is standing in fire, and the healer is a wall between defeat and victory.

The flip side of this is that healing can often be downright tedious when there's not enough incoming damage to go around. This happens a lot during trash pulls, when your party knows an encounter expertly, and/or when you massively outgear the content. Then you're either sniping healing from each other or spamming an under-developed damage toolbox to contribute a bit.

What's odd is that FFXIV seems to like to tune content so that healers barely get to heal. I healed at level 70 and found that the only time that I felt like a full-time healer was when I was doing extreme primals with pick up groups where everyone just barely met the ilvl requirements (I never got into Savage raiding). 4-man content and non-extreme bosses was mostly spamming stone/holy with a healing spell or DoT spell thrown in every once in a while.

This is bad design, as you take a class with a ton of interesting tools and make them slaves to a filler nuke button for most of the time. Instead of hitting all my buttons and overcoming a challenge I'm spamming stone stone stone stone stone aero stone stone oGCD heal stone stone oGCD heal stone etc.

People will say that balancing healing and damage is difficult in its own right. I would agree if we were healing 85% of the time and figuring out where to weave in damage oGCDs to maximize party progress, but the nuke nuke nuke nuke heal nuke meta is simplifying these healing classes until they're trivial.

Coming back for ShadowBringers, it looks like nothing has changed. I talk to friends at endgame and the only "heal-heavy" content is savage raids, but even those are innovating to squeeze out healing casts for DPS casts. Despite really enjoying the WHM class design I don't know if I can take another expansion of spamming one nuke spell and am leaning more on SMN as I go through the new content.

Why does FFXIV hate healing? Not having enough to do is really stressful.

Edit: To make this more constructive, one of the things that Square could do to reduce traditional healing in FFXIV while keeping healers engaged is to introduce the idea of damage->healing healers.

In some MMO classes you heal by doing damage, and a portion of that damage is translated into healing. E.g. 50% of your damage heals the primary healing target and 25% of your damage value is applied as an AoE party heal.

I've also seen games where doing damage fills up a resource that can be spent on healing. So instead of hitting a button to get Aetherflow or waiting around for Lillies you could say get a Lilly for every XX damage done or X damage spells cast. One class that comes to mind is the Warrior Priest from Warhammer Online. So healers still get to heal and have dedicated supplemental buttons to keep people alive, but most of their time is spent maintaining a more normal damage rotation.

[MPNZ]

*snip*.

TBH, most of this can be easily fixed with crowd control, allowing stackable abilities/spells/effects, breaking the regen/shield HLR segregation, and adding gameplay hooks et cetera, but the dev team literally does not have confidence in the playerbases's skill level or ability to adapt, which is a major problem in and of itself

[Rongway]

TBH, most of this can be easily fixed with crowd control

Please no. Crowd control should be a almost exclusively a solo tool. A rare boss/raid exception would be fine, for example the old use of Heavy on the cyclopes in Turn 7 to fix them in place until they could be petrified; but it needs to be not a common dungeoning mechanic.

The biggest issue with crowd control is that damage breaks it. This means that if you want to use crowd control effectively, everyone has to switch to single target attacks. This is not something we should want in dungeons, ever. That leaves just boss battles, and you can't have a strict crowd control mechanic in a raid because then you have to bring a certain job for the CC. And since we can't require a CC, the mechanic needs to be manageable without it, so then why even bother with the CC.

Crowd control is not the answer to fixing anything, unless the question is about balancing solo survivability.

[NobleWinter]

Please no. Crowd control should be a almost exclusively a solo tool. A rare boss/raid exception would be fine, for example the old use of Heavy on the cyclopes in Turn 7 to fix them in place until they could be petrified; but it needs to be not a common dungeoning mechanic.

The biggest issue with crowd control is that damage breaks it. This means that if you want to use crowd control effectively, everyone has to switch to single target attacks. This is not something we should want in dungeons, ever. That leaves just boss battles, and you can't have a strict crowd control mechanic in a raid because then you have to bring a certain job for the CC. And since we can't require a CC, the mechanic needs to be manageable without it, so then why even bother with the CC.

Crowd control is not the answer to fixing anything, unless the question is about balancing solo survivability.

WHM Holy has a stun. It's Crowd Control and amazing for almost every reason you said it shouldn't be. It does not force anyone to use single target attacks. It works great in dungeons and it doesn't take away from raids/ boss battles. Scholar used to have a ton of crowd control from causing slow, silence, heavy, and magic damage/healing down through virus. Crowd Control can and HAS worked well in this game. The few examples of it we had on the healer role was great. Let's not pretend otherwise.

[Hysterior]

Scholar used to have a ton of crowd control from causing slow, silence, heavy, and magic damage/healing down through virus

I still don't understand why some DPS have de-buffing skills (that they rarely use while as they have enough to do to keep their rotation up) while Healers don't anymore... give this and stuns to healers instead while DPS can focus on pewpewing more.
We can handle what gets stunned/silenced and what damage we want to decrease based on our other cooldowns.

[RylaBee]

The biggest issue with crowd control is that damage breaks it. This means that if you want to use crowd control effectively, everyone has to switch to single target attacks. This is not something we should want in dungeons, ever.

I'm not gonna elaborate on why CC would not fit into FFXIV (they would have to completely overhaul jobs and dungeon content philosophy), but you are wrong if you think that CC is forcing people to single target.
You just need to apply it smart and have tank that knows how to pull and position.
That used to be elementary knowlegde in old MMOs, not so much in FFXIV - reason why dungeon runs in FF are very uninvolved compared to many other MMOs.

[Sloprano]

Please no. Crowd control should be a almost exclusively a solo tool. A rare boss/raid exception would be fine, for example the old use of Heavy on the cyclopes in Turn 7 to fix them in place until they could be petrified; but it needs to be not a common dungeoning mechanic.

The biggest issue with crowd control is that damage breaks it. This means that if you want to use crowd control effectively, everyone has to switch to single target attacks. This is not something we should want in dungeons, ever. That leaves just boss battles, and you can't have a strict crowd control mechanic in a raid because then you have to bring a certain job for the CC. And since we can't require a CC, the mechanic needs to be manageable without it, so then why even bother with the CC.

Crowd control is not the answer to fixing anything, unless the question is about balancing solo survivability.

This reminded we got Repose, unlocked at level 8. I want to rake on the skill, but it serves no purpose because I'd rather be welcoming it. Imagine having Repose and Chain Stratagem along with Blind on Ruin 2, Slow on Shadowflare, Silence, E4E, Virus, Holy Stun, Knockback on Fluid Aura, when you delayed Spirits Within for it's Silence etc. They'd be complimentary, added to cc, or just "debuffs" on a job, not necessarily because they'd be useful all the time. Rather you came into a situation in the world, Eureka, dungeon, PotD when a group surprised you or the tank had died, you tell everyone to stop dotting and attack, hit Repose and have time to regroup. But now we have Repose along with skillsets that seem hypertuned to not have any nuance, it sticks out pretty bad.

If we can continue lumping CC along with Debuffs, I like to think Blue Mage showed us what can be done for all jobs: Giving all or some jobs additional debuffs on skills that reward timing and exploited oppertunities. Simple stuff like silence, pacify, stun, but also letting us play with Elemental resistances. This is just concerning the Regular-Duty tab, the kind you run and have run a hundred times, where the challenge is inconsequential or negligble, so instead you fall back on your skillset that is just an unlimited toolbox, or toybox, with ways to manipulate and wreck mobs.

Because it's what I grew up with on RPG and MMO jobs: They could have a tone skills not because they'd each be a perfect fit into a damage rotation, but instead it fit the job both lore, theme and "just fun to use." Imagine it as the "rule of cool" only materialized as a job skillset: Why should Scholar get Arcanist back and the funky stylish casting animation on it's skills and let them convert a full Fey Gauge into a massive fuck-off Fey Beam that heals friends on Eos and hurts and burns foes on Selene? Because it'd fit the job and be cool.

And with this I'd find both solo and group play that more gratifying.

This is so very true, there isn't a single normal mode run where I didn't wish my co-healer to kick the bucket so that I could have something to do, and I only dabble in healing.

Been having that thought too, keep thinking there is something inherently missing when my fondest memory from O12N was when I was only healer alive with no LB3 had to perform triage. What of instead that was an off-put moment where things went bad (or even myself stepped on the wrong aoe) that was off-change, and instead my fondest memory was that time I managed to top and shielf off the entire party, knowing a lull came so I managed to perform an imagined skillset where I managed to pull off a dot-management-minigame, summon both Eos and Selene, catch all mobs in a Delta triangle formed by myself, Eos and Selene, detonate it for burn damage but also serve as a mortar marker to a Nymian Grenadier that could shoot magical shells through space and time. Pull it off successfully and you get a short-window Active Time Event to high-five both Eos and Selene at the same time to replenish a portion of all Fey Gauge used.

With every step needing some timed button to pull off, the whole ordeal a challenge you barely can use when things are hectic and healing needed, but now you remember that one run fondly because you managed to accomplish all the while keeping everyone alive. I'd apriciate that more than now silently praying another human being in front of their monitor is a moment to slow to dodge an aoe so I have more to do.

[HappyHubris]

Please no. Crowd control should be a almost exclusively a solo tool. A rare boss/raid exception would be fine, for example the old use of Heavy on the cyclopes in Turn 7 to fix them in place until they could be petrified; but it needs to be not a common dungeoning mechanic.

The biggest issue with crowd control is that damage breaks it. This means that if you want to use crowd control effectively, everyone has to switch to single target attacks. This is not something we should want in dungeons, ever. That leaves just boss battles, and you can't have a strict crowd control mechanic in a raid because then you have to bring a certain job for the CC. And since we can't require a CC, the mechanic needs to be manageable without it, so then why even bother with the CC.

Crowd control is not the answer to fixing anything, unless the question is about balancing solo survivability.

Crowd control worked with AoEs in tons of other MMOs. You just stand away from the group of enemies, pull them, and CC the CC targets as the pulled enemies approach the tank. It just took a bit more finesse than running into four pulls at once and shouting "AOELOLOL."

[ReiMakoto]

They basically backed themselves into a corner that would require a massive overhaul of both tanking, healing and encounter design to get out of, which would have to retroactively change old content as well. The game was balanced about spikey damage charts, of periodic damage, the only way to generate more healing in that environment is to pull the spikes closer together, but given the resources healers have, without massive reworks healers and tanks would run out of rescourses within those spikes. Smoothing out the damage would require changes to both tanks and healers kit to support it, which would simultaenous break content which wasn't designed around it. This was exacerbated by the dumbing down of healers damage rotations from SB onwards, giving even more spikey healing tools, but less to do inbetween using them

[Chansey]

Most unpleasant healing experience in any mmo I've played so far tbh and hearing that it doesn't change much at end game is not good.