A summary of healer issues

[Allegor]

the irony is that they fixed Undraw by making MA active every time you drew a card. It effectively replaced Undraw because you can always ditch a card for a lady/lord. Draw was also effectively on a 1 min cd, despite being 1 charge, since you had to RR. Now all we got is a jank version of MA and 2 charges of Draw which only acts as busy work for the sake of busy work and offers no synergy outside of just being a 30 sec ogcd.

Honestly, that's pretty much how current AST feels. The entire card system (Draw, Play, Redraw, Undraw, MA, Astrodyne, the gauge and cards themselves) could be deleted and replaced with a single button that works like DNC steps and nothing would change. Job identity™ is the only thing keeping AST from being "WHM with a buff button"

Same with SGE and SCH since we're at it. Sure, all healers have their differences, but when aesthetics is the major differenciator between them, something's wrong.

[vetch]

I'm not re-scanning 145 pages, but if no one's mentioned recently that healer queues are still faster than tank queues even when the roulettes have shown 'tank in need' for 10 minutes straight, I'm mentioning it.

Not to be all 'I play healer for faster queue times instead of any job satisfaction' but if I'm doing everyone a favor by playing the role that's actually in need, then I want my bonus gil and XP. Undo the tank bias on the role-in-need calc that CBU3 added in all those years ago back when tanking took skill.

Achievement mounts would also be nice.

[ForsakenRoe]

Honestly, that's pretty much how current AST feels. The entire card system (Draw, Play, Redraw, Undraw, MA, Astrodyne) could be deleted and replaced with a single button that works like DNC steps and nothing would change. Job identity™ is the only thing keeping AST from being "WHM with a buff button"

Same with SGE and SCH since we're at it. Sure, all healers have their differences, but when aesthetics is the major differenciator between them, something's wrong.

I don't remember who said it (my guess is Semirhage, apologies to the real poster if I'm misremember) but someone said that they could add Bravery to WHM, which is 'single target, 6% damage buff for 15sec, 30s CD', functionally identical to the cards we have now, and it really made me think 'wow, the cards are THAT hollow and bland now, huh', normally I'd say it's not good to be that reductionist about things but when SE has reduced the job's primary 'job thematic mechanic' to be... that, how can I do anything but agree with the assertion

[Deceptus]

I don't remember who said it (my guess is Semirhage, apologies to the real poster if I'm misremember) but someone said that they could add Bravery to WHM, which is 'single target, 6% damage buff for 15sec, 30s CD', functionally identical to the cards we have now, and it really made me think 'wow, the cards are THAT hollow and bland now, huh', normally I'd say it's not good to be that reductionist about things but when SE has reduced the job's primary 'job thematic mechanic' to be... that, how can I do anything but agree with the assertion

Bravery - Physical Damage increase by X%
Faith - Spell damage increase by X%
Protect - Physical damage down (mitigation) by X%
Shell - Spell damage down (mitigation) by X%

Simple, straightforward, based in Final Fantasy lore support skills healers should have. Take stuff like Feint / Addle / Tactictian away from DPS. Let them worry about DPS, not mitigation.

Split them between the shield and regen healers to try to incentivize bringing both.

It would also get mitigation off of DPS and incentivize brining healers in content.

[SenahPanipahr]

I'm not re-scanning 145 pages, but if no one's mentioned recently that healer queues are still faster than tank queues even when the roulettes have shown 'tank in need' for 10 minutes straight, I'm mentioning it.

Not to be all 'I play healer for faster queue times instead of any job satisfaction' but if I'm doing everyone a favor by playing the role that's actually in need, then I want my bonus gil and XP. Undo the tank bias on the role-in-need calc that CBU3 added in all those years ago back when tanking took skill.

Achievement mounts would also be nice.

I didn't main Healer to help others, but because often it was the only role that would fire within any reasonable amount of time at the hours I was able to play.

Some Return to Ivalice queues I gave up on after reaching nearly 2 hours queuing as a Healer, so I don't even want to think what my experience would be like if I was doing that as a DPS. For this reason I've been a Healer for 90% of questline runs of pre-EW raids, trials, and alliance raids; and while they're fun enough when you're new despite the limitations of the role, it's not very fun feeling forced into it, and I say that as someone who loves the "fantasy" of playing a Healer.

I dearly hope CBU3 don't respond to the continued drought of people willing to suffer the role by doubling down on its simplification and homogenisation, but I'm worried given the general direction of recent development.

Honestly, I'm not even sure FFXIV's green DPS jobs would be considered Healers in many other games, but rather Supports. I wish they'd even just look to their previous work in FFXI, which didn't have hard roles like in FFXIV, but Healers ... well, healed, and thanks to the sub-job system could access an Actually Interesting Array of Abilities to use during any downtime.

I'm going to cut this post short because I can feel the angst coming through in my writing, but gods, it's so hard to not get a bit despondent about where things are headed between the general trend and the responses from Yoshi-P I've read on the topic (which if nothing else are confusing, given he has plenty of history playing MMOs).

[ForsakenRoe]

Bravery - Physical Damage increase by X%
Faith - Spell damage increase by X%
Protect - Physical damage down (mitigation) by X%
Shell - Spell damage down (mitigation) by X%

Yeh Bravery and Faith were the examples given of 'look, this is basically what the cards are now'. But for Protect/Shell, I'd rather see them given to WHM as a mit tool to help it compete with the fact AST has Neutral (which is the Temperance competitor skill) and Collective Unconscious (which currently has no competitor skill on WHM). I suggested having Protect as a low level form of Aquaveil, Renethras suggested having it as a lower level of Plenary (so PI would have mit and the +200p on AOE healing bonus, which is fine because you're going to want to heal after a hit that you mitigate anyway) and I can agree with that idea. Shell can be a midway upgrade trait, ie Protect is 90s CD, Shell knocks it down to 60s CD, PI upgrades it to do the 200p heal bonus on top.

As for removing feint/addle from DPS, sure, I don't know how much it'd change things but it's one more thing I have agency over to prevent a wipe if it happens. And I do miss Disable on AST/Virus and E4E on SCH

which if nothing else are confusing, given he has plenty of history playing MMOs

When the team were told to play Mists of Pandaria as homework for the rebuild, when it came to healers they all played Holy Priest and assumed that 'ah this is how healing works', probably. Funny, because now that very same game has also moved towards 'healers can have some damage skills too', heck to my knowledge Druid has 5 DOTs it can throw on an enemy if it really wants to (Moonfire, Sunfire, Rake/Rip in Catform, Adaptive Swarm talent). HPal generates resource by doing melee hits, Monk applies it's HOT (integral for cleaving it's filler heal Vivify to allies) when it does it's 3 from it's 123 combo (this also extends any active HOTs), Disc is Disc, etc

[Shurrikhan]

Take stuff like Feint / Addle / Tactictian away from DPS. Let them worry about DPS, not mitigation.

...Why, though? DPS have always had --even if not previously in so shared/universal a manner-- sustain-support (be that as suppression, direct mitigation, or healing buffs).

Should healers worry just about healing or tanks just about mitigation...?

Moreover, we have no way of confirming that burst damage wasn't increased with the addition of the Role Actions Feint and Addle. That DPS have a bit of mitigation does necessarily --or even likely-- mean that healers have less to mitigate (when accounting for said DPS mitigation) than they otherwise would have had.

Bravery - Physical Damage increase by X%
Faith - Spell damage increase by X%
Protect - Physical damage down (mitigation) by X%
Shell - Spell damage down (mitigation) by X%

Simple, straightforward, based in Final Fantasy lore support skills healers should have.

I mean, sure... but they'd also be boring af, especially if shared across the whole role. Bravery/Faith is just a further dumbed down take on Shadowbringer+ Cards, and Protect and Shell are almost certainly not going to be as interesting as the likes of even just Soil, Aquaveil, Benison, Neutral Sect, etc.

It would also get mitigation off of DPS and incentivize brining healers in content.

Why would it, though? If you want more to mitigate, just increase the damage dealt and perhaps slightly buff healer mitigation. That's it. It doesn't require stripping utility from other jobs. Given that the damage was likely increased for/around that added utility (and the real issue is simply the babying of the healer role itself), others' utility is irrelevant.

That said, the last thing we want to do, I would think, is to bolster healer numbers on the simple basis of their becoming increasingly unavoidable composition checks, and thereby hide the very real gameplay issues healers face.

[SenahPanipahr]

When the team were told to play Mists of Pandaria as homework for the rebuild, when it came to healers they all played Holy Priest and assumed that 'ah this is how healing works', probably. Funny, because now that very same game has also moved towards 'healers can have some damage skills too', heck to my knowledge Druid has 5 DOTs it can throw on an enemy if it really wants to (Moonfire, Sunfire, Rake/Rip in Catform, Adaptive Swarm talent). HPal generates resource by doing melee hits, Monk applies it's HOT (integral for cleaving it's filler heal Vivify to allies) when it does it's 3 from it's 123 combo (this also extends any active HOTs), Disc is Disc, etc

It's strange that they seemed to emulate WoW in one way, but went far, far more extreme in one rather narrow regard (assuming the "studying MoP" thing is official?). Sadly I'm not sure they're going to go back to FFXI for more inspiration outside completely optional content like Eureka, given "being similar to FFXI" was a big part of the dev philosophy for 1.0, and arguably a core subject to the criticism around it. (I'm not silly enough to think I'd enjoy WoW in general, nevermind my old character being in a different region; but I suspect I would enjoy healing more in WoW at the moment.

I don't imagine at this stage FFXIV would pivot enough to emulate the better aspects of healing in WoW (and to be fair I only know how it looks, and don't have firsthand understanding). But given the team seem afraid to do anything dramatic in a vacuum without reference to other successes, are there any other MMOs with role-based PvE that could be an appropriate role model for improving Healing in FFXIV? Or at the very least getting away from the 'single-button rotation' homogeneity.

[Allegor]

When the team were told to play Mists of Pandaria as homework for the rebuild, when it came to healers they all played Holy Priest and assumed that 'ah this is how healing works', probably. Funny, because now that very same game has also moved towards 'healers can have some damage skills too', heck to my knowledge Druid has 5 DOTs it can throw on an enemy if it really wants to (Moonfire, Sunfire, Rake/Rip in Catform, Adaptive Swarm talent). HPal generates resource by doing melee hits, Monk applies it's HOT (integral for cleaving it's filler heal Vivify to allies) when it does it's 3 from it's 123 combo (this also extends any active HOTs), Disc is Disc, etc

Wait, I thought it was during Cataclysm, which would definitely explain the "healers only heal" point of view, since healers in Cata had very limited mana resources, long cast bars, and hit like a wet noodle anyway....but MoP....? you're telling me someone probably played a priest when they were the most broken and we still ended with...whatever WHM is? lol

My opinions on WoW/Blizzard aside, I have to give them credit for being of the mind that once someone reaches a certain level with a class, regardless of role, they'd be expected to have a level of understanding/competence with it, and don't shy from putting it to the test, something the XIV devs seem really hesitant to do with healers, and it just feels patronizing af.

[ForsakenRoe]

To my knowledge, 1.0 was built when Cata was current, and the rebuild was completed while MOP was current. This documentary by NoClip has MOP imagery while talking about 'we needed to look at what the other games in the MMO space were doing, instead of thinking we knew best' so maybe that's Mandela effect'd me into my line of thinking. Google says 1.0 was shutdown on November 11, 2012, and that MOP released in Sept of the same year. So in order to use Cata (and only Cata) for their 'homework', they'd have to have been doing said research while still updating 1.0 with the earlier patch content, ie, back when they were thinking they could still maybe salvage 1.0

Also we have to remember, that nobody on the class design team actually mains a healer. Whether Priest was OP in MOP is neither here nor there, because they may well have played it 'wrong' and thought that's how Priest works. They may have seen a HPal in a dungeon run doing FOL spam and thought 'ah yes, peak healer gameplay'. They might have never tried Fistweaving in their homework phase, instead opting to just play Mistweaver at range (aka, incorrectly), if at all.

As an aside, I didn't know Chakra was a thing in Cata, the MOP version where it's like a Warrior's Def/Battle/Zerk stances made sense to me as 'ah this is why they added Cleric Stance', but the Cata version I'm reading about looks dangerously close to what I'd want to do with SGE (albeit, the effects lasting 4 GCDs, not 30 whole seconds jesus that's a long lockout)