A summary of healer issues

[ItMe]

What you're doing as BLU healer is:
You spam the shit out of Pom Cure or your tank dies.
Throw Gobskin for Megaflares.
You spam White Wind during Earthshakers.
As such, aside from Diamondback windows you do not have time for damage GCDs.
During Diamondback windows you have time to apply your Bristle + Song of Torment (2 GCDs) Surpanakha (4 hits with 0.5 seconds recast, essentially a GCD), cast Gobskin or heal the tank (yay another GCD) for the following mechanics and that's it.
Pom Cure is also 1.5 seconds cast before spell speed mods, so you have all the time in the world to throw your damage OGCDs in there.
I even removed my standard damage GCD spell and replaced it with Blood Drain for T13 specifically, because White Wind is expensive and as mentioned above there are times when you need to cast it 3 times in a row and that's 4500 MP gone.


Read the above and ask yourself: do you want any of that?

Interesting perspective.

Honestly? THAT would make me quit healing.

Like, that's basically just the other extreme.
While I believe that they can hit a middle ground, spamming heals like that sounds so stressful. If all fights were like that I'd bounce.

Though it would change the whole game. All fights would be more prone to snowballing. I became a tank main because this is my first "real" MMO and I'm not very good and needed to play something that's more "oops proof," but if healers changed like that...
Healing really seems to be balanced around low level play and if all healing worked like BLU I imagine we'd lose a lot of the casual community.

Also, man... it would be hard on new healers.

[Crushnight]

What you're doing as BLU healer is:
You spam the shit out of Pom Cure or your tank dies.
Throw Gobskin for Megaflares.
You spam White Wind during Earthshakers.
As such, aside from Diamondback windows you do not have time for damage GCDs.
During Diamondback windows you have time to apply your Bristle + Song of Torment (2 GCDs) Surpanakha (4 hits with 0.5 seconds recast, essentially a GCD), cast Gobskin or heal the tank (yay another GCD) for the following mechanics and that's it.
Pom Cure is also 1.5 seconds cast before spell speed mods, so you have all the time in the world to throw your damage OGCDs in there.
I even removed my standard damage GCD spell and replaced it with Blood Drain for T13 specifically, because White Wind is expensive and as mentioned above there are times when you need to cast it 3 times in a row and that's 4500 MP gone.


Read the above and ask yourself: do you want any of that?

P.S. All things considered, it has been really fun for me personally, if somewhat stressful at times.
P.P.S. Apologies for the wall of text.

This creates the other extreme though it does validate the pure healing mentality, i'm reminded of when I had to be a glorified babysitter to the Drg in my static during final coil, I had to as the bad combination design of low magic defense job + heavy magic damage bosses created a scenerio where the job could not handle mechanics without personal shields (mainly Gigaflare/Megaflare) this made my mp a lot more noticeable, and as a sch main from back then, we were laughing compared to Whm yet this tier changed that and I liked it.

But i know i'm not the norm for a healer, where I would have fun with BLU design most others wouldn't, so I think leave it on BLU.

However I think SE needs to really look at the basic truth to how healers are played, as they increase our healing abilities, we will dps more.

Reducing the dps abilities on top of increasing healing abilities has caused the current situation where our gcd heals are becoming redundant and more and more healers are bored.

Honestly just want to ask the job design team this:

With regards to healers, do you think that you may have gone wrong in your design approach, as your intended goal to have a more healing focus has unfortunately created a situation where healers are expected to dps more than ever before, and has even got people in the community considering benefic 1 and cure 1 as button bloat?

[Recon1o6]

What healers need is the stuff I wrote on the main page of this entire thread. Pure healing which BLU falls closer to is unfit for this game. BLU parties as is are terrible and not just because BLU's tanking is laughable

Incoming damage needs to be higher, more frequent or both so the heals/dps cds is not 20/80 but closer to say 50/50.
Our downtime tools and attacks need to be expanded. doubly so if the devs refuse to up the amount of healing needed in content
Our entire kits need to be reverted to a more complex and less homogenised state

The pure healing mentality must be scrapped. It didn't work with WHM in stormblood, and its not working now.
But we can't simply all jump on the green dps train. There must be a balance, and by balance that means dps/downtime and healing must be given equal priority in the role. Fundamentally as a healer gets better at healing, they don't need to heal as much, that's why the dps aspect is so important to veteran healers

[Cherub]

I hate that this thread exists because it absolutely NEEDS to. Thank you OP for spending your time summarising all the wrongs with healing. I couldn't agree more with all of it.
Since ARR I have played healing roles in savage tiers. When I went DPS in savage, the only thing I wanted to do was go back to healer. I love healing but with each passing LL in which we go ignored, my disdain for this entire situation really just beats out my love. At least acknowledge it. At least tell us you're aware. Just a few words to ease our minds.

[Recon1o6]

Something I didn't realise until this morning- SE have actually done one of the items on the What do Astro's want section- namely adding an mp restore method outside of lucid at last.

I'm more shocked than anything. Though I suspect its because they wanted to nerf lightspeed but figured that it won't be able to res AND heal and so they stuck mp on the cards.

[Recon1o6]

Update: I will start editing the main post as things are fixed with strikethrough and fixed. Hopefully it will eventually catch the devs attention.

got to keep things visible on the off chance one of them idly looks at the healer forums

[EtherRose]

Snip

Nicely done. However, there is one thing that sticks out as a sore thumb. Complexity. You healers complain that you want healing to be "Complex" but everything that you listed is mainly not complex, at all. It's mainly buff this or bring back this. Also these changes you listed, there will still be downtime.

I don't know what you want in "Complexity" but in terms of healers, there's not much to be complex about. You're healers, you're job is to heal with minimal damage output. You're not a DPS/Tank. Should they make it more fun to play as a healer? They should try. How should they? I don't know but the things you listed certainly don't contribute much to the "Make it fun and complex" that you're wanting. As i said it's mainly "Buff this and bring this back". I feel like this list just scratches the surface. There's not much "in-depth" in terms of complexity and "Fun" of what you want. What is it that you want to change to actually make them more complex and fun? Just stating "Make it more complex" is very vague. And no, buffing skills and bringing back certain skills doesn't make a job complex and fun. The only thing that was "Complex" was Astro's original cards which you have listed. Everything else is just QoL basically with certain lines like "Change the healing style so it's not WHM-lite" - How? How do you want it changed? If you're adamant on changing healers don't list vague things and expect SE to read your mind.

Lastly, i'll revisit this thread next week and give some ideas of my own. It's been a while since i last touched my 80 WHM and in the midst of leveling my AST. I do need to touch up on my SCH as well.

Also on a side note, if i'm not mistaken - in the past live letters Yoshi stated they wanted to make things more simple so it's easier to play all around for everybody. This was for all jobs. Hence why some skills were taken away completely, etc. So asking for something to be more complex probably won't fly given the fact on how the Dev team wants to do things.

[ty_taurus]

Nicely done. However, there is one thing that sticks out as a sore thumb. Complexity. You healers complain that you want healing to be "Complex" but everything that you listed is mainly not complex, at all. It's mainly buff this or bring back this. Also these changes you listed, there will still be downtime.

I don't know what you want in "Complexity" but in terms of healers, there's not much to be complex about. You're healers, you're job is to heal with minimal damage output. You're not a DPS/Tank. Should they make it more fun to play as a healer? They should try. How should they? I don't know but the things you listed certainly don't contribute much to the "Make it fun and complex" that you're wanting. As i said it's mainly "Buff this and bring this back". I feel like this list just scratches the surface. There's not much "in-depth" in terms of complexity and "Fun" of what you want. What is it that you want to change to actually make them more complex and fun? Just stating "Make it more complex" is very vague. And no, buffing skills and bringing back certain skills doesn't make a job complex and fun. The only thing that was "Complex" was Astro's original cards which you have listed. Everything else is just QoL basically with certain lines like "Change the healing style so it's not WHM-lite" - How? How do you want it changed? If you're adamant on changing healers don't list vague things and expect SE to read your mind.

Lastly, i'll revisit this thread next week and give some ideas of my own. It's been a while since i last touched my 80 WHM and in the midst of leveling my AST. I do need to touch up on my SCH as well.

Also on a side note, if i'm not mistaken - in the past live letters Yoshi stated they wanted to make things more simple so it's easier to play all around for everybody. This was for all jobs. Hence why some skills were taken away completely, etc. So asking for something to be more complex probably won't fly given the fact on how the Dev team wants to do things.

I suppose I can't speak for others, but I agree that just going back to the way things were doesn't necessarily make healing more fun or engaging. What I do think, though, is that we do need to take a look at how the healers used to be on paper and really take to heart the things that people enjoyed that were ripped away--namely the Scholar's wider access to DPS tools, Selene's and Eos' individuality, and the AST's old card system and how the highs felt while using that system.

What we need to do from there is really think about how each healer approaches their responsibilities, which in Final Fantasy XIV are:
1. Obey boss mechanics and stay alive.
2. Keep the party alive through healing, mitigation, and survival utility
3. Manage their resources so that they can continue to keep the party alive
4. Deal as much DPS as possible either directly or through support

Right now, each healer approaches each of these responsibilities in the same way.

Boss mechanics will naturally be approached the same way as healers of course, but there can be something said about the lack of unique or demanding boss mechanics that target the healers in recent content. Remember Searing Wind from Ifrit EX? Briny Mirror from Leviathan EX? What about Shinryu EX's Dragon Heads? Why not start including adds that are invulnerable and heal the boss for 30 seconds, but can be put to sleep with Repose to negate that healing? What about adding Dispel as a role action and have bosses start applying dispel-able buffs to their damage output or defense that we as healers need to remove? We talk a lot about how there isn't enough damage going out and thus too much DPS uptime for healers, but we can also add more mechanics like these to fights to give us more to do other than just DPS and heal when needed.

What about keeping the party alive and DPSing? Right now, each healer approaches these in virtually the same way when played optimally: Your GCD is for DPS unless absolutely necessary and your OGCD is for healing so that you can continue to DPS with your GCD. Why don't we experiment with different ways to approach this? What about a healer who's GCD is for healing only and their OGCD is for DPS? They don't have a GCD Glare/Broil/Malefic, but OGCD sources of damage only? It's not like they'll ever be synched down to level 1, even if you enter the weakest FATES in the game, so you can balance them around having their damage by level 4 or 6 or something. Make a healer who throws GCD DPS onto their allies to deliver so they don't have to--a healer for the players that don't want to DPS directly and can instead use their GCDs to support the party.

[Morningstar1337]

What about keeping the party alive and DPSing? Right now, each healer approaches these in virtually the same way when played optimally: Your GCD is for DPS unless absolutely necessary and your OGCD is for healing so that you can continue to DPS with your GCD. Why don't we experiment with different ways to approach this? What about a healer who's GCD is for healing only and their OGCD is for DPS? They don't have a GCD Glare/Broil/Malefic, but OGCD sources of damage only? It's not like they'll ever be synched down to level 1, even if you enter the weakest FATES in the game, so you can balance them around having their damage by level 4 or 6 or something. Make a healer who throws GCD DPS onto their allies to deliver so they don't have to--a healer for the players that don't want to DPS directly and can instead use their GCDs to support the party.

I'd say it is rather novel, and it would certainly make use of the tendency to not start newer jobs at Level 1 (if they didn't then there is the issue of not being able to level on your own since you're stuck with a healing spell)

[Canubirt]

What about keeping the party alive and DPSing? Right now, each healer approaches these in virtually the same way when played optimally: Your GCD is for DPS unless absolutely necessary and your OGCD is for healing so that you can continue to DPS with your GCD. Why don't we experiment with different ways to approach this? What about a healer who's GCD is for healing only and their OGCD is for DPS?

I'm gonna be honest, i play blue mage just like this. Its a load of fun being able to heal mainly with gcds and do dps with ogcds. If you havent tried it due to blue being limited, i do suggest it as its worth the effort honestly.