A summary of healer issues

[ty_taurus]

hmm it sounds fairly good on paper, i'm just not so sure about it being 3 stacks, it sounds kinda close to energy drain which, i guess is the point? but i wonder if it'd be too much of a cluster F to do that, and mit/healing, and eukrasian healing if needed, if stuff all ends up lining up on top of the 2 min window like manifold flames can do sometimes. Would a 3 tick dot work better, i wonder?

I can't imagine it would be. There's not a time limit on the procs in this concept, you just want to avoid reusing Toxikon before you spend all 3, however long that takes you. Perhaps that puts a bit more pressure on optimal play during buff windows, but I really dont' think that's a problem. SGE is supposed to be one of the hardest disciplines in the game's lore and can afford to have some challenge to it. There's nothing wrong with having one healer that feels busy for the players that want that. It doesn't compete with any healing resources though, so it's meant to feel more like a Continuation lite rather than Energy Drain.

[ForsakenRoe]

yeh i see it, and dont get me wrong im all for stuff that gives us more to do, but afaik lots of AST players swapped to WHM this tier because it's just so much effort to get the same performance as WHM, especially when the fights love to throw every mechanic under the sun at the party specifically at 2min windows (like p8 lmao) so id just worry this idea would contribute to a similar issue. i suppose that it's got the benefit of not needing to retarget every GCD like AST has to with it's card stuff though, so that might make it a lot more fluid to execute

[Recon1o6]

I cleared barbie ex a couple of days ago, and one thing I've noticed is that unavoidable damage is much more frequent in it than most fights for a number of years. I ended up using crest of borrowed time and occasionally feint. Abilities I otherwise barely used in shb or ew so far.

That was with a really competent group as well.

What's notable though is that I've never seen a practice group faceplant due to the increased healing requirements, only mechanic failure. Also luckily no sylphies. If the sylphies have been driven away by the msq trial let alone the scroungers in pf being unable to clear p7s, then great.


We know yoshida has heard about the pf difficulty for savage because all the freeloading healers have quit but also people like healing having some modicum of challenge at last in savage.
I haven't heard anything on barbie's trial yet other than its a really fun trial.

Is it fun to use the healing kits? because if it is I can't remember the last ex that was fun to heal that wasn't unreal

[Ketojan]

Commenting to put my voice in the pool that healing these days is a shell of itself, like many classes but I feel it more so as a healer because I was a healer main. Not anymore since we got told to go play ultimate.

Ever since they simply took the Esunas from SCH and AST (Leeches and Exalted Detriment) I felt the uniqueness bleeding away until here we are, every healer is essentially the same thing, same boring dps skills, same boring heals, same heal rotations no matter what. I also ask, is rng so bad to have? What was so wrong with the little happiness or annoyance of getting balance or spire cards respectively? What about the feeling of tossing a boosted arrow on the BLM? Id argue this was a flavor that is now lost and I miss that AST the most.

Please look closer into healers and other classes who suffer from this blandness and rethink this path. FFXIV is a wonderful mmo and I have many memories on it, I just want to have fun and feel different from healer to healer, not like if I played one, I played them all.

[Recon1o6]

Late night musings: though my question was butchered in the 6.1 live letter to be about lack of healing to do, we did still get something to heal at least this patch in the regular trial, the ex and savage. possibly some bits of criterion too but i aint seen enough yet
We know yoshida has heard about the lack of participation of healers, but also heard from 2 healers that they did like the increased healing requirements

I'm seeing 2 possibilities here the devs will take forward
1. they lower healing requirements to beg back sylphies but not to the degree it was in the last tier
2. they sustain the increased healing requirements but reduce savage loot to be less grindy to gear. maybe even role locked loot if lucky

perhaps next time there's a q&a from the forum I will have to make my question purely "Can healers get damage buttons and cards returned? The removal made healers boring since shadowbringers and turned off many veteran healers"

after all, they did give more healing this patch

[ty_taurus]

Late night musings: though my question was butchered in the 6.1 live letter to be about lack of healing to do, we did still get something to heal at least this patch in the regular trial, the ex and savage. possibly some bits of criterion too but i aint seen enough yet
We know yoshida has heard about the lack of participation of healers, but also heard from 2 healers that they did like the increased healing requirements

I'm seeing 2 possibilities here the devs will take forward
1. they lower healing requirements to beg back sylphies but not to the degree it was in the last tier
2. they sustain the increased healing requirements but reduce savage loot to be less grindy to gear. maybe even role locked loot if lucky

perhaps next time there's a q&a from the forum I will have to make my question purely "Can healers get damage buttons and cards returned? The removal made healers boring since shadowbringers and turned off many veteran healers"

after all, they did give more healing this patch

I think the wording is going to be incredibly important. No shade on your question because I'm glad it ultimately got seen, but I think in hindsight, it could have been more clear and concise about the problems. Then the misunderstanding got exacerbated by having a non-native English speaker translate and paraphrase the question live.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think the wording is going to be incredibly important.

unfortunately, and i wish i wasnt this pessimistic, but i think you could literally say 'here is a problem, here is the solution, will you implement it' about some things in this game and yoshi-p will go off on one about some completely unrelated thing and not address the actual question. we could directly say 'healers are quitting en masse because the rotation we have to fill downtime with is boring. we naturally trend towards more dps during downtime, as a result of getting better at a fight. the better we get, the more downtime there is, the more damage opportunities arise. this is an unavoidable inevitability due to the design of the game. no amount of 'we have added more healing required in the fights' is going to solve this, as gear causes players to heal for more per action and take less damage from enemies due to the defense stat increasing. will you embrace this inevitable outcome, and add more dps actions for healers during this downtime?' and he'll go on about the hypothetical 'new healer who is going to be stressed about these buttons', which means tl;dr no you can't have a rotation vaguely resembling a tank, because what if Johnny Nothumbs can't keep up with having Fluid Aura back on the hotbars?

no yoshi-p those buttons are not going to matter in any content you'd find a 'new healer' in so that point just does not fly. noone is going to notice if Johnny isn't using a fully optimised rotation in Dusk Vigil, Holminster Switch, or indeed any dungeon that isn't in the EX roulette. and even then, if someone DOES notice in EX roulette, they cant do anything except grumble to themselves that it is taking an extra 7 mins, because Johnny is protected by the TOS

sorry if this seems especially terse but i was doing criterion today (normal, not savage) and while it feels fun to be a healer there now, i can already see the writing on the wall in it's design, it's fun because we dont know the mechanics and we're constantly in 'oh fk' mode. once we have the mechanics down it is going to be just like any other savage fight where we end up at 80%+ of our actions being dps actions. we got more 'healing required' this savage tier too, and look at it: its not even more 'healing required' it's more MIT required. and since healers have a certain amount of mit they provide, that 'requirement' has just spilled over to meaning the dps have to use their mit tools too (and sometimes they dont because why would they? they didnt need it before!). more 'healing required' would be having raidwides more often, not 'instead of 120% of your hp before mit, they do 150%'. regardless, while i appreciate having more to do for week 1 healing, it's just that: week 1. it's painfully apparent how quickly that 'extra healing required' evaporates due to gear difference.

if we keep the healing required as it is, then we keep on this same downward spiral of healers leaving. we revert it a bit back towards asphodelos, maybe you get the more casual healers to stay/come back, but this is a bandaid on the bullet wound. the solution is, in my opinion, to stop trying to change the 20% of our time spent as 'healing time' to 30% or 40%, and instead focus on making that 80% 'dpsing time' actually engaging and fun.

[GrimGale]

unfortunately, and i wish i wasnt this pessimistic, but i think you could literally say 'here is a problem, here is the solution, will you implement it' about some things in this game and yoshi-p will go off on one about some completely unrelated thing and not address the actual question. we could directly say 'healers are quitting en masse because the rotation we have to fill downtime with is boring. we naturally trend towards more dps during downtime, as a result of getting better at a fight. the better we get, the more downtime there is, the more damage opportunities arise. this is an unavoidable inevitability due to the design of the game. no amount of 'we have added more healing required in the fights' is going to solve this, as gear causes players to heal for more per action and take less damage from enemies due to the defense stat increasing. will you embrace this inevitable outcome, and add more dps actions for healers during this downtime?' and he'll go on about the hypothetical 'new healer who is going to be stressed about these buttons', which means tl;dr no you can't have a rotation vaguely resembling a tank, because what if Johnny Nothumbs can't keep up with having Fluid Aura back on the hotbars?

no yoshi-p those buttons are not going to matter in any content you'd find a 'new healer' in so that point just does not fly. noone is going to notice if Johnny isn't using a fully optimised rotation in Dusk Vigil, Holminster Switch, or indeed any dungeon that isn't in the EX roulette. and even then, if someone DOES notice in EX roulette, they cant do anything except grumble to themselves that it is taking an extra 7 mins, because Johnny is protected by the TOS

sorry if this seems especially terse but i was doing criterion today (normal, not savage) and while it feels fun to be a healer there now, i can already see the writing on the wall in it's design, it's fun because we dont know the mechanics and we're constantly in 'oh fk' mode.

My first time doing Variant Dungeon we were four inexperienced players. Two tanks two dps. I had Variant Raise on. We didn't need at healer at all.

In fact, every time I go in, I encourage players to switch off healer.

With raise and cure, healers are absolutely useless in Normal variant dungeons.

[AmiableApkallu]

In fact, every time I go in, I encourage players to switch off healer.

With raise and cure, healers are absolutely useless in Normal variant dungeons.

That's literally why Raise and Cure are Variant actions: So that you're not required to take a healer in with you. That is by design; no news there.

Here's my question, though: I went in as a two-person party, me on tank (PLD), a friend on healer (SGE). Funny thing: We had almost the exact same max HP. Mine was what I expected, which means my friend's/the SGE's HP was scaled up by quite a bit. Does that mean their damage was also scaled up, meaning they wouldn't be as useless as you might otherwise think?

[Kabooa]

That's literally why Raise and Cure are Variant actions: So that you're not required to take a healer in with you. That is by design; no news there.

Here's my question, though: I went in as a two-person party, me on tank (PLD), a friend on healer (SGE). Funny thing: We had almost the exact same max HP. Mine was what I expected, which means my friend's/the SGE's HP was scaled up by quite a bit. Does that mean their damage was also scaled up, meaning they wouldn't be as useless as you might otherwise think?

The HP of the boss scales depending on how many players enter. It's possible that the HP might scale up depending on number and job, where tanks and healers increase the HP by less than a DPS would.

Criterion absolutely requires healers though.

I highly recommend doing Criterion completely blind. It is some of the most fun I've personally had in this game.