A summary of healer issues

[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.

[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

[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.

[SenahPanipahr]

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.

It does seem to be a bit of a meme in the FFXIV community that 'competency is a nice surprise', but yeahhh, much as I enjoyed the series of experiences are post-SB and ShB that have you play as someone else, I didn't understand why we were being taught the basics of a class after hundreds of hours leading up to that point. Is it meant to be for people who boosted *and* MSQ skipped? If so, people should surely be given a different, separate form of tutorial if they're going to insist on boosting.

You're definitely right that the collective experience is feeling rather patronised though. Same feeling I haver over it requiring a very conscious effort to be killed by mobs in the world. One of the best things about Eureka is the world actually having a sense of danger to it; it's such a shame that such experiences are so contained like that.

[ty_taurus]

It does seem to be a bit of a meme in the FFXIV community that 'competency is a nice surprise', but yeahhh, much as I enjoyed the series of experiences are post-SB and ShB that have you play as someone else, I didn't understand why we were being taught the basics of a class after hundreds of hours leading up to that point. Is it meant to be for people who boosted *and* MSQ skipped? If so, people should surely be given a different, separate form of tutorial if they're going to insist on boosting.

You're definitely right that the collective experience is feeling rather patronised though. Same feeling I haver over it requiring a very conscious effort to be killed by mobs in the world. One of the best things about Eureka is the world actually having a sense of danger to it; it's such a shame that such experiences are so contained like that.

If I'm being completely honest, I think if the team had the mentality they hold now back when ARR was released, I don't think Extreme, Savage, or Ultimate would exist at all. I think these difficulty modes exist as an obligation to the players who would probably leave if they stopped making savage fights, which would hemorrhage players far more than job homogenization ever will. The hardest content would probably be Alliance Raids, and the Ivalice Raids never would've released with the challenge they held when introduced.

If they started with this mentality at launch, then the player base would never know that content was missing, so there'd be no concern about losing players.

[vetch]

You're definitely right that the collective experience is feeling rather patronised though. Same feeling I haver over it requiring a very conscious effort to be killed by mobs in the world. One of the best things about Eureka is the world actually having a sense of danger to it; it's such a shame that such experiences are so contained like that.

Magical invisible safety railings on the floating islands....

[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.