A summary of healer issues

[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)

[Recon1o6]

Snip

Complexity in terms of the healer roll boils down to one of three things, and this complexity is what leads to either fun when done right, or frustration/clunkiness when done wrong.

1. Resource management. Whether this is mp management, ogcd tool cooldowns, meter resources etc managing the available kit in order to optimise healing or recover a bad situation. Take scholar for example, you had multiple options to use your stacks on, and it involved picking which one you needed the most at the time Eg lustrate that freshly rezzed dps, or do I restore expend it for damage or mp and use a gcd
2. Decision making. Healers have two halves to their kit- the healing half and the downtime half. This is one of the main reasons healers quit the role en masse in shb- whereas previously healers had to plan ahead in order to stop using their healing half in order to use their support half of the kit. Timing single vs aoe heals and buffs, manipulating cards, preparing dots for bane in between heals. Having to actively choose what members of the party get what heal, buff or what dps tool to use.
Or hell even the basic "can i do dps or will i need to prepare for a heal?"
3. Weaving management. The higher the ogcds in any kit, the more weaving space is required. Juggling which ogcds into which weaving windows provides huge opportunity for skill growth amongst the optimisers and triage for duties such as dungeons and alliance raids

The main reason a lot of healers cite boredom as a problem this expansion is because the devs overshot completely with making things simple. Healing and Tanking is so simple now that many casual players have left the role behind. Many veteran healers also left for a multitude of reasons which I did my best to sum up in the OP

If you reread the section at the bottom, you will notice that not all of the items I put were "revert to old" quite a few of it was either return the old thing and improve it or straight up suggestions to improve the new ones like the controller issues astro had, or the longtime complaint of dissipation being pointless until Shb when the fairy is weak enough it doesn't matter that much.

I wrote the OP doing my best to gather views from across the forums and a couple of other places such as reddit and discord chats.

The reason the bulk of it appears to be revert to old kit, is because the old kit was more fun for the majority of people. The devs have a tendency to remove things that make other members of the healer role better rather than bring up the underperformer which is not fun for anybody. We want every job to be equally fun, not equally miserable

[Deceptus]

We want every job to be equally fun, not equally miserable

I think this is the biggest part of it. When 5.0 previews were coming out my AST friends were saying (essentially) "All dps is now the same as AST DPS, how is that any fun"?

They wouldn't wish their dps rotation on anyone but SE forced it on everyone.

You literally have the exact same two main dps options from lvl 4 to lvl 80. To many healers: That is simply unacceptable.

[Lyth]

You cannot attract players to tanking and healing by making their gameplay more forgiving and more accessible. It just ends up devaluing the importance of these roles.

Survivability in this game is secondary to DPS. Individual deaths really only matter because of the impact that they have on dps. You're probably much more likely to wipe if a dps dies than if a tank or healer does. Raid importance gets reflected in gearing priority. The less value you bring, the later you get geared. And with a widening dps gap between 'true' damage dealers and the other roles, it's not particularly difficult to see why there's less value in playing them.

Historically, this was offset by the fact that good tanks and healers could put out some fairly competitive dps. If you don't want them to be able to do this, you have to give them some other means to provide value. There needs to be more to survival than learning team jump rope mechanics. Deaths, especially those involving tanks and healers, should not be recoverable. Damage, especially on your tanks, needs to be convincingly threatening. Untanked mobs should chew through your team in seconds. There needs to be a raidwide limit on raises per fight. Your tanks and healers should be preferentially the best geared players in your team because you need them playing optimally in order to survive the fight, and you should want the very best players in these roles to shepherd you through safely. That's how you get people to play them. Make them feel needed.

DPS is where the sub money is at. That's why we have multiple subcategories of dps that are each individually considered to be equal in importance for new job development to tanks and healers. But people migrate to roles that carry value to their teammates. If you want a trinity, you need to increase the value of the other two roles, by changing gameplay and job design to reflect this. Failing that, at least let us all at least be pretend dps.

[Deceptus]

What do we healers want for our roles?

All Healers

5. Our feedback to be listened to and acknowledged. Acknoledging and fixing mistakes is much better than ignorance
Don't base our jobs purely around one thing, like raid utility, new player accessibility etc. Think about all the game we have to play. If there's one thing the dev team needs to do, its focus the healer role on healers. We want our job to be fun both to level and to play at max.

I think this needs to be the #1 thing. For 2 expansions now we've been essentially ignored.

[Wolfgang_Kudei]

As a healer main my 2 biggest "wishlist" changes to the role are:

1. Make the healers truly unique/less homogenization. Give healers tools that others don't have. You should feel like as a WHM/SCH/AST you bring something unique to a party, not just basically the same spells with different animations.
2. Give healers more DPS abilities or a DPS rotation. Healers right now just use 1 DoT then spam their 1 damage spell over and over. We all know it, and it gets dull. If we got even just 2 more damage abilities it would drastically make the DPS downtime much more enjoyable.

[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.

[Recon1o6]

I think this needs to be the #1 thing. For 2 expansions now we've been essentially ignored.

Honestly, it was a difficult order to stick things in, but you're right. I'll change that

and 100+ likes. even though there's only a small number of us on the forums, the fact it got this far is humbling and damning both

[Aurelius2625]

Honestly a lot of this is just whining though. Astro and scholar feel really great to play in savage, and if I liked the idea behind WHM's optimization being about movement and lily use, I'd probably like that healer too...

I hated old astro cards, I thought getting useless cards was completely miserable, and even the whole, "Use what you have for what you currently need" idea was just...not fun. The new cards are great, because they are always a welcome sight to see. A personal trick attack for your buff window is amazing, and even beyond that, 8 percent damage for 15s is nothing to sneeze at.

SCH has amazing tools that can be used as well, Fey Union, Seraph, Blessing, Whispering dawn, so many things that can be utilized where you need to plan out your aetherflow.