A summary of healer issues

[Dyvid]

Honestly, I've lost confidence in the Battle Team and the ones directing the battle team. They've lost connection with the player base and just winging it, fueled by success and arrogance. It's not just about Healers either but the whole game design is slipping.

After they had to save the game from an arrogant producer, they made a battle system that work with job that complimented each other. Jobs had a skill level from easy to hard. Jobs had different designs of playstyle. Now Tank Roles and Healer Roles are basically carbon copies. Jobs are being dumbed down for greater mass appeal. Non of the key issues from expansion after expansion are being address because the Devs think everything is fine; the players are just playing the game wrong.

I may not be a healer but I do know this group has point blank told the Devs exactly what they hate and exactly how to fix it; it's an insult that they just flat out ignore the player base.

[Aword3213]

@Holly

You…might be better off on the general forums where there is two other people that states they also only want to heal but refuse to acknowledge all the changes that would be needed for this playstyle to properly exist in this game.

I’m not sure what game, or if there is one, that healer mains like you are coming from where you only healed but I’ve never played a game where healers only healed. Hell the first mmorpg I played, the healers were ice mages with only two heals. One aoe and the other a single target. That was it. This is the first time I’ve seen healers with an unnecessary amount of heal spells. Speaks even louder volumes when even raiders that main healers STILL complain they have nothing to do unless they do a specific fight.

There WAS a game that healers only heal. The healers there have lots and lots of tools of healing and the environment does require healers to solely focus on healing only. There are some interesting healing mechanics that the ideas would hopefully be utilized in FFXIV someday. Too bad that game died down due to poor contents and bad market decisions

[AngeliouxRein]

Yeah…

That feeling when a game you love gets destroyed due to unfortunate decision making is rough. But I want to focus in on the fact that you mentioned the game you use to play sounds like it was designed from the start for healers to function that way. As in, the developers knew from the start healers would have to focus on healing. The same as the games I played where the developers knew damn well healers would be required to DPS. Hence the games we played designed their healers accordingly.

If this game was designed for healers to only heal and it actually worked out that way, I would not be here asking for more DPS skills. Probably asking for more ways to buff a party or something but I otherwise wouldn’t be bothered by all the heal spells we have now. But that’s not how this game was designed and on top of that the game itself encourages you to DPS in between. WHM for example has a whole history of apparently fighting against BLM during the Magi war. The way that was being described in game would have you think WHM back then had a ton of offensive skills to fight off a raging BLM. Otherwise, how else would you survive a battle against a BLM? Heal yourself until you were tired meanwhile BLM has an infinite pool of MP? Someone was taking those BLM out as a WHM and there’s no way spamming holy was enough. SCH has a story line that was also all about military combat and what not.

If it’s not the lore that tells you, then it was the hall of novice. And if you started this game from at least back in HW, the jobs themselves didn’t have anywhere near as much heal spells as we have now. Something at all times , whether you ignored it or not, was telling you to do more than heal. I stayed silent this whole expansion about the amount of heal spells we have simply because I assumed, especially when Nier got added, healers would have a reason to use all those spells. But not even raiders fount a use for their whole kit. As if the developers just straight up forgot their own game wasn’t designed this way to begin with.

I wouldn’t mind playing a healer that only heals as long as the game gives me a solid reason to use at least half my kit at all times. Hell, I wouldn’t even be here commenting if that was the case. But SE is way too focused on keeping this game accessible to only one crowd and not taking advantage of the thought of creating different play styles across all the jobs. At least this way, there wouldn’t be as much healer rage if it was done that way. And it would cater to a larger demographic of different gamers. But that seems highly unlikely unless Endwalker changes the difficulty that allows healers to put their entire kit to use.

Until then, even the healer mains who want to “just heal” are going to see the problem and eventually get bored as their skills increase. Something gotta give. Either we get more utility or they start adding in encounters that actually require healers to heal. One or the other needs to happen.

[Deceptus]

There WAS a game that healers only heal.

Name it.

Because in any game healers have to level somehow and you can't heal mobs to death.

[Caitlyn]

It would be nice to have achievements for the healer job like they did for the tank jobs.

[Crushnight]

It would be nice to have achievements for the healer job like they did for the tank jobs.

I'd like that but that would require the devs to admit they messed healers up enough that they need to add incentives to get people to play more.

With this dev team I don't see it happening atm.

[Szylver]

Name it.

Because in any game healers have to level somehow and you can't heal mobs to death.

Lineage 2, you can even heal the monster xD but thats a totally different game.

[Imora]

Name it.

Because in any game healers have to level somehow and you can't heal mobs to death.

Back in my day healers leveled in a group, with others, in a single camp spot, while the other party members killed the mobs for you while you debuffed and buffed and healed.

It was the game that started it all as we know it, and we called it EverQuest.

Soloing was limited to a few classes that could kite well. You made a party, you found a camp, and you stayed there for hours grinding XP. You talked to people while waiting for respawns. You made friends. The game was the social experience, not the content.

And it was great.

[Sebazy]

Everquest is kind of an iffy one to use.

Clerics were very much the pocket healer as you describe, others not so much to varying degrees.

I can't even begin to express how much I miss my old handbag shaman from EQ1, I started planes raids solo, solo'd fairly significant dragons, solo'd Rakashir for a friends epic, I could just grab anyone from the guild and go merit farming, didn't matter what classes came as I could always just cover any gaps myself. Pulling, tanking, healing, even dpsing (to a lesser degree of course). FFXIV healer's are wastes of oxygen compared to what I used to get up to on my Shammy =(

Druids were less openly broken but still typically did best just soloing via quad kiting.

[MintnHoney]

Name it.
Because in any game healers have to level somehow and you can't heal mobs to death.

Allow me a moment to gush, but feel free to ignore it.
In Granado Espada, you had the option to run around with any kind of party make-up, and, generally, characters in healing stances were either unarmed or holding a rosario to increase their basic healing potency and defense rating, with no actual means of defending themselves unless they were to arm up (but this would take you out of the healing stances, disabling healing entirely, and was not an option for every character). This meant that other characters would need to protect them and that they couldn't level up on their own, but this was easily circumvented due to the MCC system, which enabled players to make a team of up to 3 characters (which could include a pure healer), and enabled them to create pure healers among other strange character archetypes that most MMOs would stay far away from.
The most "pure healer" of the giant roster of characters was Valeria, who had the most ridiculously potent HP regeneration skills (we're talking, like, 1/3 HP+SP regeneration per second, for 15 seconds, plus 50% magic damage mitigation on a single target, or half that and 30% magic mitigation on up to 5 characters for 30 seconds) and possibly the greatest Revive skill in the game (able to revive up to 12 characters with a single cast, restoring full HP&SP while applying debuff immunity and 10% universal damage reduction for 30 seconds). She was given a single attack skill, but the potency was so weak, and the cooldown was so long, that most players didn't bother leveling it up or using it, even for the possibility of it's stun. Instead, they would keep her busy with healing, cleansing, and buffing.

Of course, Granado Espada is a very different kind of game, but I can't help but always think back to it whenever I find dissatisfaction with a class or character in any (MMORPG) game I've played since. Despite being almost 16 years old, GE continues to be updated, and its roster of characters keeps expanding with new recruitables that offer a unique suite of aesthetics and gameplay while returning to old characters to improve them and keep them relevant..


..Otherwise, yeah, I can't think of anything.