A summary of healer issues

[HappyHubris]

I really, really want to love FFXIV healing. WHM really brings that fantasy archetype to life: the animations, spells, outfits, everything. I want to stride in wearing white robes and save my party from peril. It looks and feels so good to use my kit...

But nope, instead I'm spamming glare over and over and over, even when I beg groups to let me solo heal 8-man content. Incoming damage is choreographed and often completely avoided by people staying out of the fire. Incoming tank hits are minimal outside of a few scripted abilities. Party damage is completely blown away by my many massive AoE buttons and mitigation cooldowns.

I have faint memories from other MMOs about doing things like cast-cancelling big heals to keep ahead of huge tank spikes, blowing my mitigation cooldowns to keep tanks alive, and rationing mana just to survive encounters. But those are just faded impressions. Now I keep the dance going and glare glare glare glare glare glare dia glare glare glare...

I've been bouncing back and forth between BRD and WHM on the same content and it's night and day how much more DPS keeps me on my toes. With BRD, the skill ceiling is high to optimize my DPS during the dance, and I can always pick out moments where I could do a bit better next time. On WHM? Unless I literally die in the fire I'm just doing maintenance on my party.

As much as I want to be a healer, I'm likely going to hang up my hood and cane for Endwalker, as I want to be active more than I want to be immersed in my class.

[currentlemon]

snip

I'm dropping WHM as well. It was the first job that I levelled to max level back in Stormblood and I thought I could handle the 5.0 changes when Shadowbringers came out. But it got boring eventually. Hanging up my cane for 6.0, but I will not drop healing. I will still give AST and SGE a try.

[Hanayumi]

For the most part think healers are alright, there is at least a sence of variety with them, not as overly homogenized as tanks are, Whm pure healer, Ast atk buff support, Sch def buff support, and Sge dps healer. It still blows my mind that player subject themselves to just 1 job, but that just my opinion... Anyway from various interviews with Yoshi P it would seem like they are planning to continue the increase in healing mechanics, might just be why tanks got a whole lot if self healing?

[Hanayumi]

Lets be real, people are never going to be happy no matter what Devs do to healers. Toss in more dps skills, some folks arent going to use them, then complain about being kicked or harassed, prioritize healing for healers then we see them being too boing, add more fundamental mechanics then we get the 'too much to pay attention too' backlash. The worst thing about all this is that Devs are also dealing with several cultural differences, what the western folks have issues with, Japan could be totally fine with and vise versa...

[Recon1o6]

Lets be real, people are never going to be happy no matter what Devs do to healers. Toss in more dps skills, some folks arent going to use them, then complain about being kicked or harassed, prioritize healing for healers then we see them being too boing, add more fundamental mechanics then we get the 'too much to pay attention too' backlash. The worst thing about all this is that Devs are also dealing with several cultural differences, what the western folks have issues with, Japan could be totally fine with and vise versa...

while that is true in part, what they also have is the evidence of what works and makes healers happy: a functional and unique healing kit mixed with a functional and unique downtime kit with its own playstyles and balanced sufficiently between potencies and encounter style so each job has time to shine. Each kit has a mix of attacks, buffs, debuffs and utility

It was called 2.x whm, 3.x sch and 4.x astro.

[Melorie]

Lets be real, people are never going to be happy no matter what Devs do to healers. Toss in more dps skills, some folks arent going to use them, then complain about being kicked or harassed, prioritize healing for healers then we see them being too boing, add more fundamental mechanics then we get the 'too much to pay attention too' backlash. The worst thing about all this is that Devs are also dealing with several cultural differences, what the western folks have issues with, Japan could be totally fine with and vise versa...

Every person will have different opinions regarding jobs. It is something hard to balance. But we're not dealing with a complex thing to balance - we've seen our jobs being stripped of everything and given literally 1 skill to spam while never having the encountering design cathering to these changes.
Also please, unless you're in a PF in a farm part of a serious clear part, chances are, you won't be kicked let alone harassed. People that play this aren't confrontational to this point, it's more easy for them to leave than kick you. And even if it does happen because you're not really doing anything to get better... whatever? Move on, this doesn't have to be a big trauma. Find another party that vibes with you better. Watch a guide, do it with friends. It's not the end of the world.

[EthanMoonkin]

Lets be real, people are never going to be happy no matter what Devs do to healers. Toss in more dps skills, some folks arent going to use them, then complain about being kicked or harassed, prioritize healing for healers then we see them being too boing, add more fundamental mechanics then we get the 'too much to pay attention too' backlash. The worst thing about all this is that Devs are also dealing with several cultural differences, what the western folks have issues with, Japan could be totally fine with and vise versa...

If this isn’t the laziest answer to an easily solvable problem I’ve ever seen XD

[Liam_Harper]

Lets be real, people are never going to be happy no matter what Devs do to healers. Toss in more dps skills, some folks arent going to use them, then complain about being kicked or harassed

This argument comes up time and time again and it's simply not true.

If healers have more dps skills, the expectation to be using them all is lower because it's more complex. If healers have just one button, they should be slamming that one button in every free moment. So the expectation for a healer to dps is higher now. And even when it's higher, the majority of players still don't really care and it's extremely rare that healers get kicked for low dps, even in EX and Savage.

It's just scaremongering. Community expectations for healers and dps are really low and calling out low dps is against ToS. Worst that might happen is your party disbands if you're the reason they can't even beat the fight, but they still won't outright blame you. Don't try to use the community as an excuse for not getting better gameplay when it's not even close to being a problem.

[GrimGale]

This argument comes up time and time again and it's simply not true.

If healers have more dps skills, the expectation to be using them all is lower because it's more complex. If healers have just one button, they should be slamming that one button in every free moment. So the expectation for a healer to dps is higher now. And even when it's higher, the majority of players still don't really care and it's extremely rare that healers get kicked for low dps, even in EX and Savage.

It's just scaremongering. Community expectations for healers and dps are really low and calling out low dps is against ToS. Worst that might happen is your party disbands if you're the reason they can't even beat the fight, but they still won't outright blame you. Don't try to use the community as an excuse for not getting better gameplay when it's not even close to being a problem.

Agreed. The lower skilled players should be taken in mind when designing the skill floor of the job, the basic role, in this case healing. If the healing part of healers is accessible, there shouldn't be a problem, nor a conflict of interest in designing the "extra" part of the kits around slightly more complex mechanics.

If a healer keeps everybody healed and alive, I very much doubt anybody is going to have much problem with them. Ofc, someone might call them out still if the see them stand around doing nothing. The one nuke/dot approach can work, but why not add a layer of complexity around that too, so that people that want more out of balancing healing and downtime mechanics can get more variety out of it?

[Mortex]

Lets be real, people are never going to be happy no matter what Devs do to healers. Toss in more dps skills, some folks arent going to use them, then complain about being kicked or harassed, prioritize healing for healers then we see them being too boing, add more fundamental mechanics then we get the 'too much to pay attention too' backlash. The worst thing about all this is that Devs are also dealing with several cultural differences, what the western folks have issues with, Japan could be totally fine with and vise versa...

Oh pls the moment you look at these people funny you eat a report these days. More dps skill don’t bother cure bots. If you wanna stay afk in non savage fights be my guest. But if peps expect free carries in savage fight doesn’t matter what job category they gonna fly without a word. If you try your hardest and fail I don’t mind, but doing nothing is worse then doing it bad in ff 14