A summary of healer issues

[Renathras]

I think there's a misunderstanding going on here. Overwatch refers to their characters as Tank, Healer and Damage because Blizzard has a history of making an MMO. But the Healer could just as easily be called 'Support'. The Tanks could be 'Defender' or 'Guardian' or whatever synonym. Getting hung up on what 'being a support vs healer is' doesn't really get us anywhere.

This is an argument of semantics, and one that is arbitrary. A “healer” is any “support” that restores HP. “Support” characters/classes have low overall damage in exchange for brining utility—non-damage related effects that make encounters easier: healing, mitigation, crowd control, mobility, cleansing, dispelling…

They're relevant because they're distinct. It's like Tank and DPS. All Tanks in pretty much all games with a role system do DPS. Have rotations (or what in that game passes for one), etc. But they do less DPS, tend to have simpler rotations, but have more defensive (and often agro-generating) abilities, and thus slot into a different part in a party.

Look at Everquest Cleric vs Everquest Enchanter.

Clearly the two are not the same. There is very much a distinction. Calling them both "Healer" or both "Support" would be akin to calling a Tank "DPS" or a DPS "Tank" (hey, every DPS can tank at least for a little while! Sometimes "little while" means "one hit"). At that point, you may as well not have names or categories at all.

The difference isn't just "fills HP" and "does other things that are non-damage related"; again, Tanks and DPS must be the same role if we're using definitions that broad. Healers provide mitigation and recovery to party members, Support provide battlefield control (which is why Pantheon is using Control for the name of their fourth role, since they recognize that "Support" in their context can also include "Debuffing", which isn't very "supportive"; the role is more focused on control). It's a similar distinction like that which exists between "tactics" and "strategy", two words that initially seem similar, but are actually talking about completely different things that only seem similar to the uninitiated.

I will note that players who would prefer a Support playstyle often try to make this argument that they're the same - it would benefit them if we kept only three roles if one of the three was the one they'd rather play - but that doesn't make the two identical or just a difference of "semantics". A doctor dressing wounds in a combat situation and a logistics truck bringing in a supply of fresh ammunition are both "supporting" the front line troops, but they're obviously not performing anywhere near the same service, and one wouldn't expect the latter to do the former nor the former to do the latter.

The solution is clearly NOT to rename the entire role to Support.

The solution, honestly, is to institute an actual Support role. Besides, you can argue we use very little of our healing kit, but we use even less support, and all support spells in the game that aren't on DNC and BRD are also oGCDs: Chain Strat, Divination, Draw/Play are all oGCDs. At that point, you might as well rename your Support into DPS, if you're using the metric of "what do most of your GCDs do?" You'd also rename Tanks DPS, and the entire game would just be DPS. At that point, it'd be GW2, and then everyone would quit FFXIV to just play GW2...because it actually has the Trinity roles. XD

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At its core - I've said this here before and been attacked for it, even though I wasn't the one that made any demands or anything related to it (that was Semi) and I didn't say it in any way disparaigingly - the problem is that the Trinity is a gimped Quaternary, and FFXIV encounter design isn't made to work with either. Tank, Heal, Support, Damage. Changing the names of the middle two doesn't fix the problem, and more poorly reflects what's happening (AST is the only arguably Support of the four; SCH has only Chain Strat, a 2 min oGCD, and WHM and SGE have no support abilities). But people still very much like that type of gameplay. I pointed out before that the Pantheon MMO polls routinely find between 20-30% of players want to play the Control/Support role (Enchanters, Bards), and in games without Support, try to find the "best fit" for themselves among DPS or Healer (and sometimes Tank) classes. In FFXIV, I'd wager PLD, AST, RDM, DNC, and BRD are favorites of those types of players.

The answer is for a game to actually embrace that. Pantheon seems to want to, we will see how it pans out if they ever get out of pre-Alpha...

Which, just like "make healing more demanding/interesting", would require a change to encounter design - something I fully support, obviously - so all paths to a lasting solution go through "change encounter design".

So we have a "Healer" class design, a DPS heavy Encounter design and with the flaw that support with utility will break it very fast so only DPS support will work properly
If we have this, then changing the current healer classes to support (aka dps with heal options) or "full heal" will not help or change it. In the end that means the encounter design is flawed and needs changes before we even can touch classes ?
Also does this mean "holy trinity" is not properly used in FF14? Because all this problems seem to stem from the idea of "holy trinity" but with a terrible execution.

Yes.
And...Yes.

...

I mean, solo Deep Dungeon runs are "difficult content", and CC there is pretty relevant. But I don't mean JUST crowd control.

I think once an expansion is over, overgearing is fine. During an expansion, it's limited based on the gear/ilevel inflation over the course of that expansion. If the overleveling is too much, it means the intra-expansion gear inflation is too much and needs to be reigned in. Once the expansion is over, there's no reason to insist the content maintain that, especially since players generally don't want it. Again, who here REALLY wants to do Aurum Vale circa 2013? A lot of people may be quick to raise their hand, but don't forget to add "...every day in roulette" to the end of that question. Maybe you still want to, but I would wager a majority - and I will actually use that term here as I think it does apply correctly - would really rather not do that.

Personally, I'm not a fan of "gotta go fast". Every time I suggest Tanks don't need to double pull here or on Reddit, though, I get downvoted into oblivion. CLEARLY the playerbase - including present company - have spoken on that issue, and people don't want slow/long runs of routine content (e.g. anything you do for tomes/roulettes). You have things like Criterion trying to break out of that, but those have been a total failure. "The rewards aren't worth it" is another way of saying "We don't want long content for the sake of long content; we only want it for rewards".

Me personally, I still love OG Blackrock Depths with the NPC bar inside the instance and the entrance to a raid tucked away in a dungeon the size of a Capital city...but apparently, I'm an old fossil MMO player. God forbid someone wants a dungeon craw to feel like crawling through a dungeon. <_<

I do agree with your last point, though; that content really needs to allow (and arguably require) Support (as well as Healing and Tanking) to make it valid. Heroics in Burning Crusade REQUIRED crowd control. You just couldn't do it without. Of course, this made DPS that could do it must-have (and those that could not, sidelined), so that's not so good. But one could argue that's because WoW didn't have a full on Support fourth role. Everquest was in the baby days of MMOs, and so wasn't exactly...designed...well; but games since that tried to carry on that style were. Granted, larger party sizes. In a 6 person party (also what Pantheon is going for), your party is 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 Support, 1 DPS, and 2 flex roles that you can fill to taste (or with whoever's available in /shout or /general); another Tank for extra defense, another Healer for extra safety, maybe one of each for a party that will be slow but more or less guaranteed not to wipe unless everything goes wrong, or maybe you carry 2 more DPS if you're camping a relatively safe area and just want to grind out levels quickly, or another Support for more control of situations in dangerous areas, etc.

You really need at least a party of 5, and ideally 6, to have another Role. And then you need to full on develop it. Then you need to design content to where it's expected you'll have at least one of each role in the party.

Semantic ? No, i try to make the diffrence clear:

You're perfectly clear. I'm not trying to start a fight, but I think the issue is there are a lot of people that prefer a Support playstyle that want FFXIV to have it, feel that FFXIV will only have three, and so want one of them (Healers) converted to their preference (Support).

The distinction is crystal clear and everyone in this discussion knows the four roles because it's part of MMO history. Everquest had them, WoW for YEARS talked about/flirted with adding them, most MMOs with a Trinity, when the devs are asked "If you ever added a fourth role, what would it be?" would answer "Support", and Pantheon, an MMO in development, is outright making the fourth role (they're calling it Control but recognize it as Support as well), is trying to follow after EQ's footsteps.

Anyone this deep in the weeds as we are here knows what the distinctions are. Some people just want to try and blur that line so they can get more of what they want. But it's not a failure on your part to explain, it's that some people don't want to accept the difference that we all know exists. It's the difference between knowledge and belief, where someone can know a thing, but refuse to believe/accept it if it causes them issues with their worldview or desires.

But in either case, you're right; whether we call it Healer or Support, or add both, the issue at the core is encounter design.

FFXIV already has a borderline Support role, it's the Ranged Physical (less MCH since the rework in ShB), and arguably RDM.

Granted, even there, they don't have to be absolutely solidly cut. In EQ, Shaman were healers that also had some buffing/debuffing. Paladins were tanks with some healing. Rangers were damage dealers with some (token) healing, and so on. Pantheon's classes seem to have 4 in each role (more or less) with each having a bit of a subrole they can shift to in a pinch. Of the Healers, Cleric has strong heals and barriers, and seems like it can do some Tanking, Shaman HoTs with some ability to dabble in Control, Druid seems like it's going to be a technical class like ARR SCH (complete with a pet of sorts), but be able to do decent Damage. Its other roles likewise seem to be similar (like Rogue is a DPS but can swap to a more Control posture at the cost of doing less DPS). Granted, pre-alpha, so take of that what you will, but EQ's versions were kind of like that as well.

...but someone above mentioned how these things can be a spectrum, and it is entirely possible to make that work as long as the game's encounter design and class design are made with that as the goal.