A summary of healer issues

[ForsakenRoe]

Okay, regardless of what we think is the highest priority for change on the healer role, I'm sure we can all agree with this statement:

'SOMEthing needs to change regarding the healer role, and it's lack of engagement/fulfilling gameplay loop for many players.'

So for example, you believe that healers need more support tools, more healing required in raids, and a better damage rotation, in that order of priority. If the question is asked that 'hey can healers get an actual damage rotation', and the devs agree and add a damage rotation, it's not your top priority, but it's SOMEthing that's changed. Others may not feel as I do, but I think the worst possible outcome for 7.0 is that nothing at all changes in terms of healer class design direction, or fight design direction, and we essentially get 'Endwalker 2' for 2 years. So while I think that healers need Damage rotation, Support/utility skills, more HPS required, in that order of priority, if they bump the HPS required for story dungeons up to Living Liquid TEA levels, firstly I'll laugh at the 'healers should heal' players who don't actually know how to heal when the metaphorical hits the fan, and secondly, I'll be slightly happier about the role. It's not the way I'd aim to solve the issues the role has, but it's better than nothing. And if it turns out to be a disaster? We'll have more hard evidence it's a disaster to throw at the Sylphies when they insist that 'noooo damage isnt the solution'

[ty_taurus]

Okay, regardless of what we think is the highest priority for change on the healer role, I'm sure we can all agree with this statement:

'SOMEthing needs to change regarding the healer role, and it's lack of engagement/fulfilling gameplay loop for many players.'

So for example, you believe that healers need more support tools, more healing required in raids, and a better damage rotation, in that order of priority. If the question is asked that 'hey can healers get an actual damage rotation', and the devs agree and add a damage rotation, it's not your top priority, but it's SOMEthing that's changed. Others may not feel as I do, but I think the worst possible outcome for 7.0 is that nothing at all changes in terms of healer class design direction, or fight design direction, and we essentially get 'Endwalker 2' for 2 years. So while I think that healers need Damage rotation, Support/utility skills, more HPS required, in that order of priority, if they bump the HPS required for story dungeons up to Living Liquid TEA levels, firstly I'll laugh at the 'healers should heal' players who don't actually know how to heal when the metaphorical hits the fan, and secondly, I'll be slightly happier about the role. It's not the way I'd aim to solve the issues the role has, but it's better than nothing. And if it turns out to be a disaster? We'll have more hard evidence it's a disaster to throw at the Sylphies when they insist that 'noooo damage isnt the solution'

There are still a few things that I'm looking forward to in EW, namely the soon release of the new deep dungeon and the new Gold Saucer feature, blitzball potentially. But beyond that, I'm kinda over EW and just anxious to see what information we get on 7.0, and this is the biggest thing I want to see. My faith in change is shaky, but I also have a very cautious optimism that this is the lowest point and what comes after will be better to some degree. This largely comes from a couple places: mainly the heated criticism of EW's stagnancy. It's not just the 2 minute meta, but also things like the kaiten removal sparking the delay in the AST and DRG reworks (presumably). Concerns about healer gameplay were largely out of sight, out of mind in the past, but not as much anymore.

[ty_taurus]

i dont understand the healers have nothing to do mindset, bc while more than 3 spells would be better than spamming one spell with a dot is boring, i always find myself too busy healing? even i agree, with sage the healing from dpsing doesnt do enough to keep my tank healthy alone, so im always using a lot of my spells to try to reduce dmg taken and stuff

i dont get it .- . i panic just trying to keep my party healthy in regular content sometimes bc someones always getting hit by something or someone, regardless of healer job

i aint touched savage or ultimate n i dont want to based on my panic in just current other things trying to do mechanics i dont know AND heal but i just dont understand. this. what ppl say here? that theres not enough to heal, nothing to do? moments of downtime like a boss anim for phase change or smthn seems to be a blessing during long moments of stress but idk for me theres always something to heal bc i want to keep my pt healthy

im having fun healing as long as i dont fail anyone n i dont know when healers would have opportunities to have intridicte dps rotations bc of the need to be able to heal :shrug: nless it's not a combo that can be interrupted or just lets you do other things idk man

the thing i'd agree with, which for me isnt as much an issue bc it lets me order my hotbars similarily, is that all the jobs i guess dont have much to their identity, and even then, to make sure every job is equally competent in all content so u can play what u want, im not sure what the solution is if balancing gets hard

i get other people have issues but im just dumb and dont understand. bc i am not having the same experience of healers being unnecessary or boring. i like being able to help

What it comes down to is a mastery of the craft of healing. The better you become at healing, the less you actually need to heal due to a combination of feeling more comfortable with outgoing damage and more knowledgeable about how best to use your tools. In a dungeon, for example, as a SGE, I almost never find that I need to use anything other than Kerachole, Ixochole, and Kardia healing--maybe a Taurochole on the tank during pulls, and I also try and get the most out of Pneuma since it's a small DPS gain against multiple enemies. I quite literally never spend a single GCD on Diagnosis, Prognosis, or their Eukrasian equivalents outside of prepull. For the entire duration of a dungeon, the only spells I cast are my limited DPS buttons. I would have a more engaging experience playing Brayflox Longstop on BLM. And that's not because I don't want to heal or support. I've just reached a point where I am completely unafraid of damage, because I know what will and will not kill my party members.

And that's where the issue lies. It's important that the healing role feel approachable and forgiving to a novice or intermediate healer, but the role stagnates heavily as you expand into expert and master territory.

The healing toolkits of each healer could easily be slimmed down by making the healing tools more interactive, and utilizing things like charges, or buttons like Eukrasia to enable more flexibility with those tools to address the content we have. This would add room to include more tools that are useful regardless of whether healing is needed or not--Tools that are not required to clear content, but allow the expert and master healers to have a more engaging experience without alienating the novice and intermediate healers.

[Renathras]

Hm...

Ran someone off again....?

EDIT: I don't mean that antagonistically, but it does appear to have happened. Judging by the deleted post with the message "Meh" after a person posted about liking Healers/healing and was...well, yeah.

[Sebazy]

It's the usual thing of someone new or less experienced/confident in the role not really understanding why the old vets are fed up with things because they haven't experienced it yet.

Again, it's seemingly hard to convey how the role is actually pretty fun when everyone is new, under geared and generally bad.

It falls to bits at in end game casual content once people get some gear and have half a clue what they are doing. The experience gets objectively worse as everyone gets better.

[Renathras]

It's the usual thing of someone new or less experienced/confident in the role not really understanding why the old vets are fed up with things because they haven't experienced it yet.

Again, it's seemingly hard to convey how the role is actually pretty fun when everyone is new, under geared and generally bad.

It falls to bits at in end game casual content once people get some gear and have half a clue what they are doing. The experience gets objectively worse as everyone gets better.

Three problems with this:

1) That's subjective, not objective. To many people, the experience gets objectively better as everyone gets better. In old style games, the reward for being a better healer was being a less stressed healer. That's still true today.

2) Not everyone who disagrees with your position is a new/less experienced player.

3) Even if we ignore both of the above - that's no reason to run people off by hitting them with a wall of salt when they come to the forums. Often you guys suggest that no one thinks like I do, as no one is here regularly posting on the forums from the position I am other than me. But every time someone does, they're met with a wall of bitter vet salt that's pretty grating to most people (it is to me, but despite what I'm called by the regular jaded vets, I have thicker skin and so stick around anyway). To most people, that's REALLY toxic and alienating, so they just leave. Having a toxic forum environment not only gives you a slanted view of what the playerbase actually wants, it's just a bad environment to cultivate in general, and creates a self-fulfilling "fact" of "No one disagrees with the echo chamber, because they aren't here in the echo chamber disagreeing", when said echo chamber is actively repelling dissenting voices from stepping into (or staying in) it.

[Jirah]

Three problems with this:

1) That's subjective, not objective. To many people, the experience gets objectively better as everyone gets better. In old style games, the reward for being a better healer was being a less stressed healer. That's still true today.

2) Not everyone who disagrees with your position is a new/less experienced player.

3) Even if we ignore both of the above - that's no reason to run people off by hitting them with a wall of salt when they come to the forums. Often you guys suggest that no one thinks like I do, as no one is here regularly posting on the forums from the position I am other than me. But every time someone does, they're met with a wall of bitter vet salt that's pretty grating to most people (it is to me, but despite what I'm called by the regular jaded vets, I have thicker skin and so stick around anyway). To most people, that's REALLY toxic and alienating, so they just leave. Having a toxic forum environment not only gives you a slanted view of what the playerbase actually wants, it's just a bad environment to cultivate in general, and creates a self-fulfilling "fact" of "No one disagrees with the echo chamber, because they aren't here in the echo chamber disagreeing", when said echo chamber is actively repelling dissenting voices from stepping into (or staying in) it.

1) One this is a none-argument saying its subjective, Once youve done higher end content you start to get bored with core content faster as it continuously fails to engage. It gets better after what level 15 but when u take ur first steps outside of core things never get better unless you do more hardcore content, healers suffering the worst of this fallacy of engagement. and two a less stressed healer is the worst playstyle basically doing 1-1-1-1 until GG. This is a fact unless some madman likes having the worst kit in the game and not doing the role they chose. three as horridly gatekeepery as it sounds coming from me new players must be seasoned in order to have a solid opinion on the true nature of the game to this extent. If everyones pitch was valid you'd have lv 50 SAm asking for a rework because their job is boring. Just doing the bare minimum of MSQ also doesnt warrant much insight to rebuttal, if anything they should agree more at least savage players have that sense of fun briefly. four, this is a MMO not a old style rpg where you can solo things without healing

2)This isnt really a argument but id love to see statistics on this one, whos to say really?

3)irrelevant, back to topic

change is required either by tangible kit or the backdrop of the instances

[Renathras]

...

1) Is a statement of fact. You're stating a subjective opinion. You say what YOU feel as an absolute, but it isn't. "you start to get bored"; yes, you start to get bored. I've yet to get bored. We may have different thresholds, but a lot of people play the game, play Healers, and aren't bored, and have done higher end content and core content. Many of such people have been playing the game (and even older games) for a long time. I've been playing since ARR. I have "a solid opinion", it just isn't the same as your own. That's what "That's subjective, not objective" means. You are stating your feelings and opinion, which is perfectly fine. Your opinion is valid...for you. But it isn't universal and isn't what everyone else feels.

2) I'd love to see statistics everyone agrees with your position unless they're new/experienced? I've been playing since 2.3. I've been doing Extremes since HW. I've been doing Exploration content since HW. I've done Savages since ShB, and early (week 2-3) Savages since 6.0. Unless you're going to say Extremes aren't hard content or Savages don't count, then my position is one person who disagrees with your position and isn't a new/less experienced player, meaning my mere existence disproves your position being universal.

3) Absolutely relevant - you're literally creating a toxic, abrasive environment that is running people off. That's bad no matter what the topic is. Worse, it's often used as proof that you're right - that no one (or only one person) is disagreeing with you, when you're actively running off anyone else who does so. That's highly important to the topic. I get you'd be quick to want that not to be mentioned, because of how bad it makes things look here - but they actually ARE that bad. There's a reason there are few dissenting voices here to your position and that there aren't a lot of happy, enthusiastic people posting here. Part is because happy, enthusiastic people are often playing the game and having fun, not posting about it on forums, but the other part is how toxic and abrasive this forum has become from the regulars to people who are happy with the way things are right now. You not wanting your dirty laundry aired doesn't make it irrelevant to do when it happens.

Change isn't "required" - the game is hugely popular and has a stable population. Change is "desired" by a portion of the population. THAT is a fact, yes.

[Sebazy]

Change isn't "required" - the game is hugely popular and has a stable population. Change is "desired" by a portion of the population. THAT is a fact, yes.

I disagree.

Strongly.

My sources and reasoning? Whilst I'm not really world prog material myself, I've raided with and covered for a very significant chunk of the EU's absolute best healers. Raided for Solitude, Exordium, Angered and Entropy, all top flight world race FCs with world firsts ahoy. Go back to BCOB and I regularly chatted with and knew just every hardcore healer on Ragnarok.

I don't know a single healer from back in the day that still raids regularly to this day. The few that do still play at all just do clears then go on hiatus until the next Savage/Ultimate patch release.

Savage content dies out and is abandoned faster than it ever has been in the past. Go back to Coil and in Solitude we had 2-3 groups clearing week in, week out without fail. People would get shuffled between groups and the 'dead' time leading into the next raid tier was just as active as the first few weeks of prog as groups were organised and teams got prepared. Compare it to now and it feels like hardcore FCs are graveyards 8 weeks after each content release now as there's no desire to keep on clearing.

The game is still riding on Shadowbringer's success and momentum but it's population is anything but stable, have you not noticed how it feels like pre expansion blues mere weeks after each content drop now?

It's not that we're getting less content as we're clearly not. SE are throwing more variety of side content than ever at us and that's fine. But core content has suffered from following the same recipe almost to a T since Creator. Thus we chew through it faster than ever and get bored of it because we know what to expect and we've seen it many times before.

IMHO unless the next expansion comes out to Shadowbringers level acclaim and hype, they need to deliver on the core gameplay loop and try to make things fresh again or the game's decline is going to continue to become more noticeable from the top down. The current conveyer belt of getting new players faster than old players quit isn't going to last forever.