A summary of healer issues

[Renathras]

healers need to be designed so that they are fun when not healing too.

The thing is, healers are supposed to be healers, not dps-lite or green DPS (no matter how much the community insists otherwise). Take any old-school FF game and you'll often see WHMs with ONE damage spell, or rarely two, and their gameplay loop is generally "autoattack when not healing" until learning Holy late in the game. Now, I'm not saying it should be the exact same in an MMO (different formats/combat systems), but that this is kind of what healers have traditionally been.

In WoW I healed on Paladin, Holy Priest, and Druid from BC to...I think Mists when I quit when Warlords launched. MOST of your button presses were heals, because the healing requirement was higher.

I think it was in Cataclysm when Druids got Wrath [of Nature] (their Glare) at 0 MP so you could cast it freely when you didn't need to heal. Because of how MP5 (mana per 5 seconds) worked in that game (you would regen more the larger percent of that 5 seconds you weren't casting), healers would actively NOT take any actions when not healing because it was necessary for MP regen. I remember the Wrath change because it meant I could deal damage without gimping my healing, as before then, you legitimately wouldn't cast damage spells or just the odd Moonfire (instant cast DoT). Indeed, WHM is often likened to WoW's Resto Druid, and its damage kit today is comparable to Resto Druids' when I played WoW. The difference is, in WoW, my Resto Druid had to lean a lot more on its healing kit...and oGCDs weren't a thing (I don't think...), so those heals all counted towards your GCD presses. The healing Druid damage kit as basically Wrath (Glare) and Moonfire (Dia), and they even worked the same, with Wrath being a low MP cost spamable nuke and Moonfire being an instant cast DoT.

My buddy who played a Resto Shaman noted that their version - Lightning Bolt - actually regenerated mana. Though I don't remember Shamans having a second damage spell at all, so it was JUST Lightning Bolt over and over when they had no healing to do.

In Wrath of the Lich King, Holy spec Paladins (Healadins) were a one button pony. You would target one tank and put Beacon of Light on them (copied all your heals to them), target the other tank and spam Holy Light for most of the fight. You'd use an instant cast Judgement spell on the boss every 20 seconds or so to keep up one of two buffs for the raid (usually you'd have two Paladins with each doing one of the buffs), either a HP regen on hitting the boss or an MP regen on hitting the boss. So imagine WHM with just Dia and Cure 2 and you chaincast Cure 2 for 90% of the fight. That was Paladin healing in Wrath. This was actually optimal due to their kit and spec (stack crit, regen MP spent on spells due to crits, and spam Holy Light for days without running out of mana), moreso than mixing it up with Holy Shock (an instant cast medium heal that could also be an attack when used on enemies) or Flash of Light (a smaller heal that was more MP efficient) since you had all the MP regen going on from Holy Light use anyway.

All of which is to say:

1) If we actually had to heal more (and use GCDs to heal), then the healer "filler" kits wouldn't feel so stale.

2) The current dps kits on FFXIV healers isn't really that different than DPS kits on other MMO healers circa 2014, we just have far less TO HEAL, far more oGCD heals to weave instead of using GCDs, and so we lean on the DPS GCD kits much more.

when are we talking about? because in stormblood the main complaint wasnt that ast and sch needed to do more damage. they were already doing more damage.

They WERE doing more damage. The complaint was they weren't doing more damage ENOUGH for the "more work" they felt they had to put in. This was entirely what the ShB kit gutting was predicated upon.

EDIT:

in HW the main complaints were that cleric stance made dpsing scary or whatever and that "my cohealer is chadding me !!!!!!"

Correct, which is why it was eventually just made into a damage CD and then eventually just removed.

it was only after shadowbringers busted sch and asts kneecaps that the complaints about damage performance started happening.

It most certainly WAS NOT. The complaints were the reason the kits were gutted. That and to address the healer shortage the Devs decided was from healing being "too hard" (which is why boss damage was reduced relative to the power of the kits). THEN the complaints morphed into "Well now I'm bored", at which point we got the "Oh, don't worry, this is just the first tier and later tiers of the expansion will require more healing and stress your kits more". And...they ended up not doing that so much. Of course, now that has morphed into "Just play Ultimate"... <_<

But the reason the kits were nerfed IN THE FIRST PLACE was a combination of the "healing is too hard", "my healer isn't DPSing enough for my liking", and "SCH/AST have to do more work than WHM but don't do enough more damage, buff our damage since we have to do more work", collectively.

i personally would not be complaining unless whm was somehow top dog while pressing 1 key and astro had 40apm only for it to be always worse. but thats a balance problem, not a gameplay one. numbers can be easily tweaked.
either way i dont think whm being simple means it needs to be simplistic. PLD's rotation is simple, and yet you have probably heard the jokes about PLD being an microsoft excel main. black mage is a simple job with the highest skill ceiling in the game.

a job can be simple without it being shallow, and things can be easy without being boring.

BLM is hard due to positioning and fight knowledge requirements. Its core rotation isn't really all that simple when you get into optimizing it. Contrast SMN, which IS simple.

PLD's rotation isn't simple (though it's not particularly complex, either); WAR's rotation is simple. PLD's is just rigid, though GNB's is more so.

One problem is "boring" is up to personal taste. I find current healing pretty engaging when I'm doing Extremes or Savages, but I don't have a static and so don't have anything on "farm", either.

[QooEr]

The thing is, healers are supposed to be healers, not dps-lite or green DPS (no matter how much the community insists otherwise).

i never said theyre not supposed to heal. im saying healers dont always need to heal, and thus need to be fun when not healing too.
i dont want to be a dps-lite or a green dps, but there needs to be something interesting to fall back on because you cant demand 100% efficient healing 100% of the time from everyone.

i want you to think about this: what separates a good healer, from a bad healer? and im talking about only healing here. what differentiates skillful healing from unskillful healing?
just keeping people alive isnt skillful, its the bare minimum. how can you go above and beyond that? maybe you heal them up faster! maybe you keep them alive using less resources! maybe both!
ok so once you learn to heal efficiently, whats next? what are you going to do with the extra time and extra resources you saved from healing well? maybe you use the saved time & resources to play safer, but are you just going to waste the time you bought yourself by doing nothing?
eventually youre gonna get so good, that youll put that extra safety to good use and do something productive with it.

the reward for healing well is getting to dps more. thats not me wanting to be a green dps, thats just the product of becoming more efficient at healing. even in the most basic rpg thats what happens when you maximize efficiency & survivability.

currently the reward for getting better at healing in ffxiv is...... you get to spam 1 miserable dps button for nearly the entirety of the fight. on all four jobs.

1) If we actually had to heal more (and use GCDs to heal), then the healer "filler" kits wouldn't feel so stale.

2) The current dps kits on FFXIV healers isn't really that different than DPS kits on other MMO healers circa 2014, we just have far less TO HEAL, far more oGCD heals to weave instead of using GCDs, and so we lean on the DPS GCD kits much more.

gonna start with #2 so i can go on a tangent for #1
2) this isnt even relevant anyways because ffxiv is its own game with its own design implications. older mmos also had like, actual triage and resource management. i sure as hell would love if ffxiv had triaging, resource management, moment to moment decisions. but sadly it does not. incidentally let me remind you that a lv 16 conjurer in ARR in 2013 had more dps skills than a lv 90 whm does now. fun !

1) the filler kits feel stale because they are stale. people will inevitably notice them. the very fact that theres easy content and hard content means that if you do easy content for any reason youll notice it. the game literally revolves around repeating duties for one reward or another. thats why there has to be something to fall back on to keep healers engaged regardless of skill level. (inb4 "do ultimate")

speaking of ultimate, even ultimate doesnt make healers gcd nearly as often for me to not notice how bad the filler spells are.
below is an excerpt of the first 2 minutes of TEA. living liquid is one of the most heal intensive phases of any fight in the entire game. surely this will keep healers busy and not dpsing! uh wait a minute

still 75-87% of gcds were dps spells. and this is when the party is collectively taking an entire HP bar worth of damage every gcd.

do you have any idea just how ridiculous the damage intake would have to be for not just 1 but both healers to truly dedicate themselves to gcd healing the majority of the time? for me to even consider even touching a gcd heal, the fight needs to exhaust all of me and my cohealers ogcd heals, and then do even more damage so that i finally need to cast a single gcd. and if you want me to keep at it you better throw even more damage because my ogcds are coming off cd soon and youre gonna have to do it all over again! if even the hardest fights in the game dont do this, i think its fair to say its far from realistic to expect the devs to up the healing requirements in normal or even extreme content so much that i cant look at my hotbar and think "wow i sure wish i had something else to cast than malefic for the next 27 seconds!"

One problem is "boring" is up to personal taste. I find current healing pretty engaging when I'm doing Extremes or Savages, but I don't have a static and so don't have anything on "farm", either.

and im happy for you. now if only the role had more playstyles so more kinds of players could enjoy healing.

[Renathras]

<things to discuss>

Last thing first: Which is why I continually propose that there should be 4 different levels of play for the 4 healers so everyone has at least one they enjoy.

To the 1 and 2: Note that 2 is based on 1. That was kind of my point. You can't treat it in isolate. Based on 1, noting that 2 means FFXIV is comparable to other MMOs in healing from that time makes sense. And to be fair, it's not like it was ever hyper DPS intensive - WHM in SB only had one more single target DoT (Aero and Aero 2, Aero 3 was for AOE, not single target). If we were using a substantial number of GCD heals, then having few GCD damage spells wouldn't be noticeable since you don't sit there pressing Glare over and over again very often.

As to your note about what damage would have to be - it's less damage would need to be ridiculous and more (a) oGCD heals need to be toned down AND (b) healing needs to be more continuous/sustained. The current healing model is that healing generally comes in bursts, then periods where no healing is needed (absent mistakes). What this means is that the bursts can never exceed party health pools (at least with mitigation), as they would just KO everyone. This then allows one or two oGCDs to be used to get the party back to survivable health before the next damage spike. If the oGCD heals were weaker, this would require GCD heals (you simply wouldn't have enough oGCDs for them all, and so oGCDs would assist, not replace, GCD heals), or alternatively, if damage was more continuous but SMALLER, you'd have to use GCD heals since most oGCD heals are spikes all at once with only a few being HoTs. That is, if you take 50% damage then no damage for 30 seconds, an Assize will do the job. But if you took 5% damage every other GCD, you'd run out of oGCDs 30-40 seconds into the fight and then have to cast GCDs - more realistically, you'd space out oGCDs or hold them for bigger hits and use things like Medica 2 augmented with Solace/Medica to deal with the tick damage and the oGCDs for larger attacks.

Point is - at the very least - the current encounter design is garbage for healing.

...in one way or another, I assume we can agree on that.

EDIT: I should also note that FFXIV HAS HAD fights like this at various points in its history, to mixed effects. The king Behemoth in Labyrinth of the Ancients, for example has a constant electric damage on all party members. Back when synced party members didn't outheal it basically just on natural regeneration, it would require things like Medica 2 (since WHM had no AOE oGCD heal at the time) and the like to keep the party from being whittled down to death.

[QooEr]

Last thing first: Which is why I continually propose that there should be 4 different levels of play for the 4 healers so everyone has at least one they enjoy.
[...]

Point is - at the very least - the current encounter design is garbage for healing.

...in one way or another, I assume we can agree on that.

we do agree on these two points. i wouldnt call them "levels of play" but yes, more variety in healer gameplay loops is overdue.
and yes damage patterns need to change. if we had sustained damage on top of the usual spikes that would be a lot more fun.

To the 1 and 2: Note that 2 is based on 1. That was kind of my point. You can't treat it in isolate. Based on 1, noting that 2 means FFXIV is comparable to other MMOs in healing from that time makes sense. And to be fair, it's not like it was ever hyper DPS intensive - WHM in SB only had one more single target DoT (Aero and Aero 2, Aero 3 was for AOE, not single target).

aero 3 was used in single target too, and fluid aura still dealt damage. the only healer in SB with the barebones rotation we have now was ast.
and youre right, healers were never super dps intensive, but for some reason people love to pretend like returning to 2-3 dots would tear the fabric of society or something?? healers can only have 2 dps buttons from lv 4-90 because anything else is too much ???
people back in stormblood said they liked whm because it was simple and straightforward. why is having 2 dots suddenly such a high standard now?

If we were using a substantial number of GCD heals, then having few GCD damage spells wouldn't be noticeable since you don't sit there pressing Glare over and over again very often.

this is where i think we disagree. look back at heavensward ast, where its only ogcd heals were essential dignity and CU every 90 seconds. you had to gcd heal pretty much everything. and while i think that was fun on its own, even with so many healing gcds there was still more depth to the dps kit. ast had aero, combust, combust ii and malefic. if i had nothing left to heal at a given moment, i still had more going on to make the not-healing interesting.

healing alone cant be the Entirety of the enjoyment of healer jobs, it sure can be the primary source of enjoyment, but there still needs to be something else for when youre done. and i dont say this just because i like optimization; even when i was new to healing i would get that one cohealer that just spams medica ii the entire time, or that one paladin that kept using clemency, or that one dungeon boss that barely does any damage. theres always going to eventually be a time where healing isnt needed for one reason or another. theres also the issue of how difference in healing skill/efficiency affects your healing uptime. healing in ffxiv wont ever be nearly half as gcd heal intensive to justify such an awful dps kit, because on one side of the spectrum you have cure spammers and on the other you have guys that manage to solo heal ultimates and still have time to dps. how do you keep the vets entertained on healing alone without making it impossible for newbies to clear?


the reason healers are so bad now isnt just because theres so much downtime OR because the dps kits suck. its because theres too much downtime AND the dps kits suck. both problems need to be fixed.

[Renathras]

we do agree on these two points. i wouldnt call them "levels of play" but yes, more variety in healer gameplay loops is overdue.
and yes damage patterns need to change. if we had sustained damage on top of the usual spikes that would be a lot more fun.

I say this with all sincerity: I'm glad.

aero 3 was used in single target too, and fluid aura still dealt damage. ... and youre right, healers were never super dps intensive, but for some reason people love to pretend like returning to 2-3 dots would tear the fabric of society or something??

I'll have to find some archive of the potency somewhere, but I was thinking Aero 3 was a DPS loss on one target? It has been literally years, though, so I may not be remembering right. I still miss that animation (and Stoneskin/SS2)

people back in stormblood said they liked whm because it was simple and straightforward.

Compared to SCH and AST.

this is where i think we disagree.

Somewhat, though I think less than you might think. Personally, I hate DoTs. So the solution to healers being "Just throw some more DoTs at them" seems iffy to me. Not to mention the Devs said something about DoTs being computationally intensive on the server backend and that was why they wanted to move away from them on SMN. Me personally, I'd rather have a 1-2-3 rotation with an oGCD (think MCH's core rotation with Gauss Round) instead of 1-3 DoTs. It's also why, if we really are just forcing DoTs on healers, I would rather one Job that has just one, since I personally hate them so much. But this is ALSO why I personally propose having a DoT healer, a DPS rotation healer, a 1-2-3+oGCD healer, and a Glare+Dia WHM. Having it spread out that way would allow people who like each style to have one they can enjoy playing.

Some other sub/roles already do this well. For example, Ranged has a rigid rotation (MCH), proc heavy (DNC, sorta like RDM), and DoT heavy (BRD) Jobs in it. I see no reason why this isn't possible in a slimmed down way with healers with something like AST being rigid rotation (the better to weave cards between), SGE being proc heavy with a DNC/RDM(caster phase) level rotation, and SCH leaning into DoT gameplay. Just add Glare+Dia WMN as the fourth and we've got a quartet that has at least one that would appeal to players of any skill level or complexity desire. The vets could gravitate to whichever flavor of complex suits them more and your Cure 1 spammers (which I've never personally seen, at least not since ARR - I'm not saying they don't exist in a game with 5 million players, but I feel they're more rare than how often they're thrown around in arguments...) would have their Job over in the corner that they could still clear content at passably.

EDIT:

the reason healers are so bad now isnt just because theres so much downtime OR because the dps kits suck. its because theres too much downtime AND the dps kits suck. both problems need to be fixed.

Going back to the very first thing I quoted you as saying:

We agree.

I've been saying this for a while. My personal solution would be less downtime. My secondary solution would be to shake up 3 of the DPS kits. Fair enough?

[Irenia]

Whatever solution the devs come to, as long as easy content is still fun for healers, I'm good. I despise the "just do Savage" response from Yoshida - I didn't want to feel punished for helping my friends.

Unfortunately, I feel easy content in this game will always have low healing requirements. Perhaps this should even be expected; healing should have a difficulty gradient too. But healers should also work when the party's skill is way above what the content demands.

[QooEr]

My personal solution would be less downtime. My secondary solution would be to shake up 3 of the DPS kits. Fair enough?

ah, i guess i misunderstood as just one Or the other, but not necessarily both. tbh these forums are really hard to follow, theyre less like a forum and more like a bunch of posts.

I'll have to find some archive of the potency somewhere, but I was thinking Aero 3 was a DPS loss on one target? It has been literally years, though, so I may not be remembering right. I still miss that animation (and Stoneskin/SS2)

naur it was definitely a gain on single target. you dont really need an archive, just find some old footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5CKRr89YFs
i also miss the animation, it was so satisfying and the little variety in animation added to the fantasy too.

Personally, I hate DoTs. So the solution to healers being "Just throw some more DoTs at them" seems iffy to me. Not to mention the Devs said something about DoTs being computationally intensive on the server backend and that was why they wanted to move away from them on SMN.

i think suitable replacement for dots is what blue mage has-- those weird GCDs with a longer cooldown. theyre like dots in the sense that they are GCDs and you cant spam them, but theyre unlike dots in that theyre literaly not dots. i think getting more skills like those would be neat. phlegma is already this, but we kinda need more than just 1 if its going to be any interesting to use imo (like blu).

Me personally, I'd rather have a 1-2-3 rotation with an oGCD (think MCH's core rotation with Gauss Round) instead of 1-3 DoTs. It's also why, if we really are just forcing DoTs on healers, I would rather one Job that has just one, since I personally hate them so much. But this is ALSO why I personally propose having a DoT healer, a DPS rotation healer, a 1-2-3+oGCD healer, and a Glare+Dia WHM. Having it spread out that way would allow people who like each style to have one they can enjoy playing.

i do think thatd be a good idea, but i would personally at least see whm get *something* else. not something huge, just something simple on the surface that you can optimize a bit, so its damage ceiling can be closer to the others without people complaining about the effort : performance ratio. theres a lot of subtle optimization that goes over most people's heads. e.g. a dancer can switch their dance partner around for maximum benefit (nin has a higher burst, blm has higher sustained dmg). ast can hold cards for reopeners, etc. i wouldnt necessarily want whm to have like some big overarching rotation, just a simple trait or buff or extra attack that lets you squeeze a bit more damage with a little planning. like if, idk, using certain skills gave you a proc or a cd reduction on assize, or a trait like thundercloud.


i dont think many people wouldve even considered stb whm to be hard or distracting by any metric, which is why i think even the tiniest depth beyond dia glare would be for the better.

Some other sub/roles already do this well. For example, Ranged has a rigid rotation (MCH), proc heavy (DNC, sorta like RDM), and DoT heavy (BRD) Jobs in it. I see no reason why this isn't possible in a slimmed down way with healers

ive always thought healers could have like the arr class version of a job's rotations, especially the ranged and casters. theyre very simple and theyre decently entertaining.
archer is just 2 dots + a proc + a short ogcd .
thaumaturge is 1 dot + fire / blizzard spam + transpose
arcanist has that 3-phase rotation thing

[Renathras]

...

Agree on sometimes being hard to follow. And I'm honestly up for most changes as long as they retain AT LEAST ONE healer that is more or less as today. I don't think that's a tall ask, honestly. Or shouldn't be, anyway.

Well, the reason I say what the potencies were - people had a lot of interesting...ideas...about what was and wasn't a DPS gain back then, many of them being wrong. The theorycrafting stage of FFXIV's evolution really came into its own in SB, with fits and starts before then and a lot of people doing things that were sub-optimal. So I'm never quite sure "here's a person using it" means it was good or not. BLM's used Blizzard 2 sometimes. Jokes aside, I think even WHM's could cross-class it. Did NOT get the MP regen effect, though.

Agree on BLU. I like things like that. The thing is, they need to be GCDs with shortish (15-30 sec max) CDs. Otherwise we end up with Assize weaves. But the trick is also not to fill Jobs with needless button bloat. MCH, for example, has 4 "big CD" buttons, each a separate button...but you effectively use them on CD outside of some very niche optimization. Drill, Air Anchor, and the new sawblade one. They could honestly replace them with one button that cycles through each every 15-20 sec (this is literally how PvP MCH works) and nothing of value is lost other than unneeded hotbar bloat. So there's kind of a careful balance there. And I don't mind stuff like Phlegma for but Hydaelyn's sake, don't make it melee ranged! I HATE melee ranged stuff on my caster/ranged classes (and healers are a caster). I already dislike that on RDM, but it's part of the class fantasy there, at least. It isn't with Jobs like WHM. SCH/SGE is a bit more of an argument...

I'm a bit confused what you mean by damage ceiling being closer without people complaining. I thought the point of making healer rotations more busy was so that people who are bored could be less bored, not to push people who enjoy simpler rotations out of being competitive/raise the skill ceiling? Which is it? The first I'm willing to support, the second I'm not. If people are just going to complain that someone has an easier time, then we might as well stick with what we have now as we don't have to worry about THOSE complaints with the present system - which is how we ended up with it in the first place.

Besides which, there already IS some WHM optimization, people just tend not to get it.

Yeah, a bit of nuance isn't bad. But as I say, if we give players that with 3 Jobs, why must we with all 4? Especially if 1-2 of said Jobs are going to be a good bit more complex than they are now?