A summary of healer issues

[Allegor]

It's extra fun because Earthly Star is now unusable while soloing FATEs, quest battles, and exploration zones unless you want to pull every mob within 20 yards down on your head. It's cool though, AST wasn't lacking for personal damage, right?

Lazy raid design is actually making the rest of the game worse.

Something something "why are you even doing that with a healer?"

[Banriikku]

So we have a "Healer" class design, a DPS heavy Encounter design and with the flaw that support with utility will break it very fast so only DPS support will work properly
If we have this, then changing the current healer classes to support (aka dps with heal options) or "full heal" will not help or change it. In the end that means the encounter design is flawed and needs changes before we even can touch classes ?
Also does this mean "holy trinity" is not properly used in FF14? Because all this problems seem to stem from the idea of "holy trinity" but with a terrible execution.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think there's a misunderstanding going on here. Overwatch refers to their characters as Tank, Healer and Damage because Blizzard has a history of making an MMO. But the Healer could just as easily be called 'Support'. The Tanks could be 'Defender' or 'Guardian' or whatever synonym. Getting hung up on what 'being a support vs healer is' doesn't really get us anywhere. Why is the word 'Healer' or 'Support' being given such gravity, that it dictates what the role MUST do? Does Omniknight or Oracle in DOTA not count as a 'support' because they have a skill that heals allies? Are they instead a 'healer', in a game that doesn't use that term anywhere else? What about the League analogues (i dont play idk names), are they 'healers' or 'supports'? Lifeline and Wattson in Apex can restore allies HP and Shield respectively, does that make them healers?

By this logic, the solution is actually to rename the role to Support. We sure as heck aren't 'healers' if we're spending like 50% of our GCDs on nonhealing stuff, or using damage amping kit like ChainStrat or Divination. And hey, if the devs believe the same thing about the role's design (it needs more healing tools because it's a healer), renaming it to Support might actually get them to think 'oh hang on, there's more to designing a job than 'another AOE healing tool'

[Banriikku]

As far i know in Overwatch there is no healer, only support and if you play like a healer you are a bad player. IN OW you have Support and if you are pedantic there is also flex but does not matter for the argument.

In FF14 i have the feeling we have a extreme DPS favored encounter design but the classes (WHM, SGE, SCH, AST) are build with "healer" idea in mind. The healer idea is simply put a class that extemly focused on healing and keeping the party alive while the DPS department is nonexistent or only to a extreme minimalstic degree there.
SO we have "the healer idea" as a job, while the encounter is DPS favored which leads to 98% Dosis cast in a full extreme fight and this is just bad design. But sadly so it seems on a fundamental level that we just can't make healer class to supporters. The encounter design needs a change first... (while they are at it : Kill the 2 minute meta pls).

[ForsakenRoe]

As far i know in Overwatch there is no healer, only support and if you play like a healer you are a bad player. IN OW you have Support and if you are pedantic there is also flex but does not matter for the argument.

Right, they play like supports, they have support kits, and playing like a 'pure healer' is kinda griefing.

But the role is called 'healer' in OW, not support. Which is my point, the word 'healer' or 'support' is too broad in overlap to get hung up over. Trying to justify why healers in FFXIV cannot have more 'support' stuff with 'because the role is called healer, not support' is really not-sensible imo, because we're in the same boat here as OW: heal allies when they need it, help kill enemies when they don't. Issue is, in OW there's gonna be people in need of healing a lot more often than here in FF, due to it being PVP and this being strict spreadsheetable fight timelines

[Banriikku]

I think Support is the role but healer the name. We keep the healers as they are and we get an Enocunter Design change so that healing to that exten is needed or a more support role BUT this would also need a encounter design change first.
All encounter are build around DPS and low utility. If you are adding utility in form of a supporter the encounter would break. I dont say "no to supporter in FF14" but SE needs to aknowledge that the enocunter design is failed and needs a rework that first or all healer changes will be for naught.

[ty_taurus]

This is an argument of semantics, and one that is arbitrary. A “healer” is any “support” that restores HP. “Support” characters/classes have low overall damage in exchange for brining utility—non-damage related effects that make encounters easier: healing, mitigation, crowd control, mobility, cleansing, dispelling…

The only difference it would make if the role was labeled “support” is that we might’ve seen it also include jobs like bard, dancer, and red mage, and those jobs might’ve offered more support than just increased healing effects and a cleanse on bard, a little extra healing on dancer, and increased healing/mitigation and instant raises on red mage.

[ty_taurus]

I disagree.

If you are playing as a non-healer support in a game, your focus is maximizing the value of the utility you offer. You are playing a class or a character with limited offensive potential. While dealing damage is still a part of your responsibility, whether you are a healing support or a non healing-support, if you are not taking advantage of your utility, you're doing a disservice to the rest of your party. Obviously, what's important is that you're doing your best, but if you're playing a character like Thresh in League of Legends, your focus is not specifically attacking--it's snaring and trapping opponents. You want to do as much damage as you can while doing that, but the objective of your gameplay is to lock other players down so your team can land kills. The same is true for a healing support character. Nami is not only trying to top people off with her heal, she's trying to also poke and harass enemies and lock them down. This also applies to Final Fantasy.

While we don't have a designated support role, we have jobs like Red Mage who are capable of providing a small amount of situational utility that you should be prepared to take advantage of when needed. As a Dancer, I communicate with my raid group's to establish where my healing cooldowns best help them conserve resources. I don't want my Curing Waltz and Improvisation to go to waste if a healer is just going to overheal around my cooldowns anyway, so I try to establish when I can take extra weight off their shoulders. And if you're playing as a healer, you need to ensure the safety of the party, and that takes priority over attacking. Most of the time these days, that doesn't mean you stop attacking because 90% of all healing actions are OGCD, but you need to be ready to stop and hard cast a heal if it's needed.

[Banriikku]

...le snipp...
While we don't have a designated support role, we have jobs like Red Mage who are capable of providing a small amount of situational utility that you should be prepared to take advantage of when needed. As a Dancer, I communicate with my raid group's to establish where my healing cooldowns best help them conserve resources. I don't want my Curing Waltz and Improvisation to go to waste if a healer is just going to overheal around my cooldowns anyway, so I try to establish when I can take extra weight off their shoulders. And if you're playing as a healer, you need to ensure the safety of the party, and that takes priority over attacking. Most of the time these days, that doesn't mean you stop attacking because 90% of all healing actions are OGCD, but you need to be ready to stop and hard cast a heal if it's needed.

But there is no weight and this why we are discussing what can be done. What you discribe is the ideal but not the reality. Besides the very rare moments there is no need to "support" from anyone. Support is not limited to "the healer" job in FF14 and can be done by many jobs, you are right at that, but here we are discussing the healer jobs (WHM, SGE, AST, SCH).

Most encounter need DPS and almost only DPS, very rare you get the dispel or the extra Feint. Most of the time it is do the dance (mechanic) correct and DPS the Boss down. The healer job is an afterthought. In my opinion give the DPS a little more selfsustain and you could delete all healers and still play all content. We are "full healers" but healing in this order of magnitude that all healers provide is not needed.
So most of the time in an extreme or savage fight, i sit there and torture my keyboard every 1.5 seconds the same button and every 30 seconds the extra buttons for "tha allmighty DOT" ( i did Bab EX for the mount and got an 80% dosis spam at the end. I think if i would focus more i could push this even more).

So what i would like to see is, make the healer job a "Supporter" with an actual DPS-Rotation plus utility and reduce the healing of these jobs.
The other way i can see is double down on the "you are a healer" is to make it necessity to heal so GCD healing dont feel so bad.
In all cases give the healer job in genral more Utility to work with. But no matter what change would come the encounter design needs a change to allow (the need for it) for that much utility or healing.

[Post]

This discussion makes it clear why fight design is so important to the feel of the jobs

My favorite part of healing is where I get to bring the utility of saving someone with actions like lustrate or benediction in quick response. This generally only happens on errors on their part, and it's now also a capability every tank has.

Slowly healing the party between hits to get out more damage using fight knowledge doesn't feel as rewarding when that damage is just 1 1 1, I think, but also when I don't even have to plan to have an oGCD because I have so many.

The more they want to put in longer, more complex mechanical dances, the less damage usually comes out because often damage is tied to failing those dances and there can only be so many minutes in a boss fight.

Job designs even beyond healers affect how it feels to bring their unique support, too, though. Like, every new expansion RDM gets a longer combo making it more disruptive for them to provide their rez support, and likewise SMN used to have passive egi and DoT damage continue while rezzing but now has an incredibly tight window to spend everything. And if it weren't for the fact we've gotten so little else, I almost want to say that Expedient should have just been a pRange or BRD cooldown. Peloton already exists, and they were the o.g. Swiftsong, after all.