A summary of healer issues

[Recon1o6]

There's been many threads here and around the internet with legitimate criticism of the way Healers have been destroyed in shadowbringers and endwalker has not improved things despite sage's introduction. It is clear that the dev philosophy isn't working and healers are becoming increasingly rare.
There are many problems, some worse than others.

So I thought I'd summarise them.


Edit: Added number 10 after browsing some old patch notes
Edit 2: Fixed some spelling mistakes
Edit 3: Added the what healers want section
Edit 4: Updated Astrologian's section given SE have decided to delete another chunk of its identity

EW edit 1: rewording and cutting down the size a bit
EW edit 2: grammar, p8s correction from p7s, updated about ultimates all being solo healed
EW edit 3: spelling error, added links to TOP and P12s cleared without healers


Terminology
Dot: short for Damage Over Time. Spells like combust and dia.
GCD: short for Spells on the global cooldown
oGCD: Short for Abilities

First things first
"Go Play Ultimate" was surprisingly rude Yoshida and does not address the massive problems the healer role has. But you told us to provide feedback and we've been doing so for years so here we go again.


1. Lack of engaging gameplay from constant Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam. There is no skill ceiling or depth
Healing is designed with most of the healing being done by abilities. So most healers will spend their time dealing damage and using abilities to heal between attack spells
What spells do we have to deal damage with? Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis and a single Dot on each healer. From level 4 to 90 all we do is constant spamming of a single offensive button no matter what content we do. Main story duties, fates, raids... it is always Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis and every 30 seconds a single press of a damage over time spell Try black mage with just blizzard and thunder, thats how boring it is.

-Due to removal of crowd control and no gcd utility the only thing left to do is dealing damage.
-We spam the basic attack spell with a dot every 30 seconds. I had more things to press during downtime back as a level 16 conjurer in 2.0 when I first entered Sastacha at 6 attacks (stone, aero, fluid aura, thunder, blizzard 2) and 4 conjurer spells (Cure, Medica, Protect, raise)
-Sage is even worse in this regard as it heals with its damage spells and has even less need to heal via spells. Its dot and basic attack is the same button and so its a constant spam as Toxikon is a dps loss and the added mobility is not needed. Pneuma is a healing tool.
-The devs stated they removed attacking spells to make healers focus on healing at shb launch and to improve accessibility. This was a monumental mistake that caused many to quit the role and did not address the actual reasons for low healing and low take up of healers.

(those being: lack of engaging gameplay especially below extreme difficulty and during solo gameplay like story duties, fates etc. Lack of choice of healers early on as only conjurer is available at the start, lack of general tutorials for healing. Perpetually last in the loot queue in savage raiding due to the focus on dps requirements, general redundancy in game play making it demoralising to play)

Solution
-restore and add damage buttons that were removed in Shadowbringers and Stormblood
-Return Aero 3 and add a water attack to round out the elements of whm. Also add seraph strike and make it upgrade stone/aero/water to Quake/Tornado and Flood for a burst phase
-Return miasma, miasma 2, shadowflare and bane to sch
-Return Stella as an attack with % chance after casting malefic or gravity for Astro and if possible more attacks
-Add another single target attack and an aoe dot to sage. Double toxikon's potency, or buff it slightly and add more addersting generators.
-provide more utility to all healers. Make plenary give bravery/faith, return Ast's cards, give eye for an eye back to sch, give sage something.

2. The level of damage needed to heal in all content is far too low, avoidable, infrequent and scripted
Ffxiv's battle design is scripted so damage comes in spikes at 30s, 60s or 90s. Most enemies do not deal autoattack damage when casting mechanics. Together with the low damage this means that little damage is done and what heavy spikes of damage there is can be topped off instantly with abilities if not evaded all together. Unavoidable damage just isn't frequent enough to require healers.

Many so called harder to heal duties did not hit harder. The "healing checks" mentioned turned out in practice to be mitigation checks not healing.

-Tank busters such as Zodiark's Ania either hit much weaker now or tanks are just that strong. Either way they used to either kill or significantly wound tanks when unmitigated, and were usually followed by a mini tankbuster swiftly to finish off an unprepared tank if the healer wasnt paying attention. For example Alexander always follows up Punishing heat with Divine spear. Damage strong enough to kill a tank if not healed or the tank forgot to use mitigation. Contrast that with Ania which barely hits 50% of a tanks hp even at minimum ilvl
-Dungeons are currently cleared with 1 tank and 3 dps when farmed.
-Very few fights in the game need two healers even at minimum item level
-Ultimate coil of bahamut was cleared without a healer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzD6-VBCtYg
-Omega protocol was cleared WITHOUT A HEALER THE SAME PATCH IT CAME OUT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k65bhdogQKw
-The weapon's refrain, Epic of Alexander, Dragonsong Reprise have been solo healed
-Eden's gate 4 (savage) was cleared without a healer when it was current content. https://youtu.be/zdDxjXMMWgU
-The 6.0 extreme trials have also been cleared without healers and with increasing frequency.
-Pandaemonium 1 normal was completed SOLO by 3 of the 4 tanks https://youtu.be/fFcZCEny4x4
-Pandaemonium 1 and 2 SAVAGE was completed WITHOUT healers when current https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRbvZJ-EU0U
-Pandaemonium 12 SAVAGE was completed WITHOUT healers when current https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etKYa3K70ek

Solutions
-Significantly increase the amount of unavoidable incoming damage across all content
-Readd random crits to boss auto attacks
-Increase the frequency of damage players need to heal. The battle design team needs to spread the healing required over a fight rather than in specific intervals.
Example: byregot drops his first room wide damage 3 minutes into the encounter. The rest of his damage can be avoided outside of the main tank taking auto attack damage. Make that 12s, 33s, 54s etc for incoming damage to heal to the party. Make us use different tools!
-Lower the Item level sync limits so that gear doesn't outstrip healing as much.
-Aim to make healing closer to 50/50 casting healing spells and casting damage spells rather than the current 20 (If even that!)/80 ratio
-Make bosses do more single target damage to dps and healers.

Barbaricca extreme's knuckle drum and Pandemonium 8 savage's aionopyr/aionagonia were a welcome surprise and an excellent baseline for healing requirements. You have had several healers tell you in game they liked having healing to do. Sustained frequent damage rather than spikes (Though dont remove spikes completely)


3. The level of healing output in both healers and other roles is far too strong for most encounters
As of 6.0 every job has some form of self healing. Some are better than others and no healer would want them taken away from the other job, but the problem is that collectively the overall mitigation and healing from none healers is enough to negate healers entirely.

-Warrior, paladin and gunbreaker all have enough sustain that they literally don't need healers and can keep other party members alive at the same time
-Tanks also have access to mitigation that can be shared frequently
-dancer can stack its healing with its partner to heal sufficiently every 60s for most normal encounters providing the party dodges mechanics
-Red mage can take over healing duties given its decent vercure, magick barrier and verraise
-healers have so many healing tools that many become obsolete or unused because they are designed for higher damage that doesn't exist.

Solutions:
-Decrease the strength of healing available to dps and tanks
-reintroduce random crits to encourage healing
-Introduce random damage spikes to random members in full party duties so healers have more to do
-Design future fights so the healing/dpsing split is closer to 50/50 as opposed to 20/80[/U]

4. The healers are too homogenised and have lost what made them unique with nothing in return. The pure/barrier split is meaningless.
All healers have access to shields and healing over time. This means the distinction is not only meaningless but has limited Ast and Sage's design. Astrologian lost nocturnal sect and any good Sage player avoids using their shields because Ixochole, physis etc are simply better. So Ast lost one of its two playstyles for nothing.
Every healer has the same 1 basic attack, 1 dot, 1 aoe skill from level 4-90. This was the biggest complaint across the role in shadowbringers and endwalker yet it has not been rolled back.
All 4 healers have almost the exact same healing style too with many 1-1 equivalents. Despite the advertisement, Sage did not bring anything new to the healer role and is mostly identical to scholar played with the common macro for single target embrace

-Sch still does not have selene returned or its dots
-Ast is now missing noct sect, time magic like time dilation, its stun and its beloved cards
-Whm has lost its self buffing from 2.0 and 3.0, aero 3, cleric stance and unique healing style
-Sage can heal while doing damage. Beyond that it is identical to sch almost button for button.

pvp has proven that healers can be both unique in playstyle and fun. Bring that design philosophy back to pve!

Solutions
-Scholar gets Selene back, Eye for an Eye and leeches
-Ast regains its sects combined to 1 button to switch between them. Return its cards with royal road spread and Minor arcana, time dilation, give disable as a silence. Restore celestial opposition to a stun/buff extension, exalted detriment and luminiferous aether
-Whm lillies get expanded to buff the whm. Return shroud of saints and revert the thin air nerf
-Sage needs some attacks, debuffs and more addersting generators.

5. Healers have no decision making and very little synergy within their own jobs
Because healing has such a low skill floor AND ceiling, little to no effort is needed to successfully keep the party alive. You just use healing tools in the order of ogcds first, gcds second. The healers are also punished for healing with lower damage, wasted mp and being locked out of parts of their kit. Most of the healer's buttons are use and forget. There is little interactivity between the buttons

-Sch is the worst of the bunch. Dissipation kills the fairy preventing fairy actions, Fae union locks other fae buttons and Seraph does something similar.
-Whm and Astrologian have the "enhanced freecure/benefic" trait which is a trap. Cure 1 and Benefic 1 are too weak to use the moment level 50 is reached. They encourage spamming these buttons to new players instead of more appropriate healing and damage options
-Sage's adderstings are used solely for Toxikon. Toxikon however is a dps loss to earn by generating addersting and it does not work as a movement tool either when Sage has the free Icarus jump

Solutions
-Move freecure and enhanced benefic to stone and malefic respectively
-Stop dissipation killing the fairy, fae union locking out the fairy and seraph from other skills
-Add effects to all healers that reward or refund healing with buffs, dps, resources and more
-Make mana and meter management more impactful.

6. Healer's actions are bloated with dependant, outdated or functionally useless buttons that have survived pruning when other more valuable skills have been lost
We all know button limits are a thing. Ideally the jobs should top out at 30 ish buttons since anymore than that tends to make pc players grumble (controller players have easy access to 48 buttons at any time)
A common complaint is that some actions have been removed for no worthwhile reason while other buttons that should have gone years ago are still around.
Many buttons have also had their functions changed with no thought given to how fun or useful they are to the job

Solution
-Merge the following
>Cure 1 into Cure 2, add a trait so Cure 2 automatically changes to Afflatus Solace upon gaining a lily, likewise Medica into Afflatus Rapture, Divine benison upgrade to Aquaveil
>Benefic 1 into Benerfic 2, Draw and play, Minor arcana and crown play (if not make MA work directly from Draw), Celestial intersection and Exaltation
>Physick into Adloquium, Eos and Selene (rotate it between the two) Aetherflow and Energy drain, Excogitation and protraction

-Delete the following
>Undraw, Neutral sect

-Buff or change the effect of the following
>Plenary indulgence to provide damage buff in faith/bravery, Reduce cure 3's mp cost, revert thin air nerf, improve liturgy of the bell, revert dia/aero to 18s, buff tetragrammaton to give the whm a damage buff for the next cast of glare/stone
>Make Synastry affect ALL healing, change celestial opposition back to stun/time buff, change cards back to being 6 different buffs, buff divination to compensate or make minor arcana lord/lady, change astrodyne
>Change sch's healing to work off of the fairy gauge only. Make fey union an instant cost based benediction (eg 5% missing health costs 5 gauge, 90% costs 90 gauge), change dissipation to consume fae gauge to gain aetherflow OR buff the scholar with access to free uses of fae gauge and aetherflow actions while giving movement speed buff. Change recitation to repeat each action at 50% potency for its duration (think double or astro's pvp thing)
>Make Toxikon 1 either dps neutral, split Toxikon 2 from it and change it to leave a damage over time. Make Rhizomata give 1 addersting and change Zoe so Kardion affects the party for its duration

7. Levelling healers is terrible with missing rewards in job quests and skills learned later in spite of previous versions being at lower levels.
Lower levels on healers have large gaps between getting anything new and meaningful due to the continuous removal of skills only to have them replaced at higher levels by new ones that have a new coat of paint. The removal of core skills such as time dilation make many job quests feel unrewarding with the npcs giving or teaching you...nothing!
In addition, it makes lower levels on healers extremely boring as you have no tools or fancy buttons.

-Temperance and Neutral Sect are literally the level 40 Whm skill Divine seal at level 80 and with a 10% mitigation buff/Sect buff respectively
-Summon Seraph looks very flashy...but its just Rouse with the disadvantage of locking the sch out of other parts of their kit and on an extended cooldown
-Divine benison is Stoneskin but an ogcd instead of a gcd spell
-Astrologian's quests are very interesting, you get gravity, time dilation, spread, royal road taught to you by npcs. Not anymore.
-When scholar is unlocked, the hotbar is emptied immediately due to the lack of buttons. This should not happen

Solutions
-Return older versions of skills to lower levels to front load the levelling. This makes them feel more complete and makes later levels upgrades
-Move energy drain and aetherflow back to level 10 and readd miasma 1 and 2. If neccessary change Arcanist to be a healer to balance out healers at low levels
-Add or return new buttons to job quests to make them feel rewarding

8. There are clear signs of nobody with anything more than minimal healer experience designing or testing the healing role and this is causing damage
There was a famitsu interview recently that stated (paraphrasing)
"We replaced our dungeon tester for healers because they were getting too good...this person had started learning normal raids and extreme"
There is so much content now between level 1 and level 90 that even the most casual or new healer will have enough experience to learn the basics of being a healer- do damage when you don't need to heal, don't overheal where possible, ogcds first, the job is to keep people alive rather than topped off.

But if the healer tester was getting too good for taking their first steps into optional content, then nobody on the testing team is experienced enough with healers to tell how bad some of the changes have been over the years

Case 1: Energy drain. This is a core function of scholar's entire job, yet 3 times now it has been removed and 3 times it has had to be put back
Case 2: "We want healers to focus on healing so we removed damage buttons". The causes of low healing is because healers barely need to do any healing. Damage is low, avoidable and predictable and healing power is cheap and strong. Removing the damage buttons has simply caused many veteran healers to quit the role and does not address the low healing requirements at all.
Case 3: The entire stormblood lily system. The fact this got off the drawing board in the first place says a lot. Healers as a rule do not use their gcds to heal unless its an emergency or they have no ogcds to use. Even when it got revamped in shadowbringers, it still took years before it finally became dps neutral. Everyone was shocked because it was the first time in years that a positive change had happened on healers that wasn't to fix a gamebreaking issue like Ast's controller problems or energy drain breaking sch
Case 4: Sage being a "dps healer" designed for veteran healers that does not address a single issue veteran players have. It took far longer for sage to be designed than reaper


-Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam
-low healing required in all content to the point healers are entirely optional
-constant dismissiveness towards healers by devs
-Lack of skill ceiling or depth to the jobs
-Homogenised to an appalling degree
-perpetually last in the loot queue in savage
-Only robes and coats, no plate armour
-gameplay penalises improving at healing with boredom

Case 5: Medica 2 according to patch 6.4 is better at healing a single target than Cure 2. Dia was a downgrade from aero 2 for a while doing same potency while having worse mana. Ruin 2 and Toxikon existing while cast times are 1.5s meaning they are redundant. Lots of odd decisions in adjustments like these.

Solution
There are 4 job designers. Have one of them REQUIRED to main healer and gain plenty of experience with it or hire/transfer someone who does. Have someone testing healers who knows what they are doing at level 90 like anyone should with at least extreme experience.

The playerbase understands that testing should happen so new players can get through duties. However the severe lack of challenge in this game between normal content and savage is excessive and the floor needs to be raised in casual content to match the majority of players at 90.
Thus testing should ALSO be required for high level and mid level party.

Someone without the experience to match the job will naturally not understand what are fun parts of the job (such as Ast's cards) and core components (such as energy drain).
The kaiten fiasco? Healers have already been through it unfortunately.

9. Healer glamour options are far too biased in favour of robes and feminine styles.
12 years now healers have had had nothing but cloth. Where's the armour that looks like it belongs on the battlefield?
Why is everything a damn dress?

You couldn't even leave judge Drace's armour alone, no you just HAD to make it a damn frilly dress instead of a cape.

10. The "Pure Healer" concept that was explored in Stormblood and forced upon all healers now is extremely unpopular and is unsuitable for FF14's combat system, lore and community
The pure healer concept is as follows: Healers in all content are supposed to heal only using their tools in order to account for frequent and or heavy damage and do not have opportunity or need to do damage. Damage tools are just enough for solo duties if any are available. If not a separate role is given for solo content
We saw an exploration of this concept in White mage in stormblood. Devs thought it would be a good entry to healing but instead many white mages quit the role and very few new healers took it up.
White mage was utterly detested by the community for several reasons: losing critical abilities only to require using 7 role skills in order to reacquire what it had lost; having no utility and being unfun to play.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...eedback-Thread if anybody wants more information
Yoshi P even said that they were wanting to encourage people to play healer and tweak the balance so that its less stressful and he said much the same thing again this expansion.
Well SE needs a dictionary as tweaking means small adjustments to make things work properly, not strip everything out and burn it to the ground.

Pure healing only works if there is high incoming damage with dps checks and enrage timers that do not require any healer damage to clear consistently. The sheer fact that almost every extreme, savage and ultimate are adjusted to take into account healer dps to even clear at minimum ilvl means that SE is lying and has been for years
Pure healing does not work either in a game with large amounts of solo battle content such as ff14 either as it makes the solo duties a chore and unfun to play through which distracts from any story or interesting mechanics
Finally, higher skilled healers need to heal less, and have more downtime. So of course they need something to do in the downtime. But we don't have anything now except spam Broil/Glare/Malefic

FF14 healers started out as the combat medic concept: The healer heals up unavoidable damage and contributes to fighting when they do not need to heal either by protection or by helping defeat enemies and by and large the community and the very battle design is of this concept what with the hardest fights barely requiring 1/3 healing casts in the entire 20 minute battles. It is also suitable as healers still have to do solo content and as such they need something interesting in order to have fun during the solo battles.

Healers enjoy getting more skilled same as anybody else. That means they enjoy having more downtime and the best way to make downtime fun is by having healers be combat medics and support their allies or doing damage themselves.
Many veteran healers have quit- there's a 50 page thread about healers quitting for goodness sake. But new players clearly aren't filling the gaps as its constant healer in need and they have nothing to look forward to when levelling that's any different from more heals and nothing to do when they don't need to heal which as stated earlier is on average 70-80% of ANY duty.

Look at the all the complaints about boring downtime and anybody can see that ff14 healers, are combat medics first and foremost.


Lore wise this also plays into the healers themselves. White mages have a big theme in the 50-60 that WHM must do more than just heal to protect. SCH are all about creating openings, debilitating and manipulating enemies into their demise. Astrologians attune their magicks as needed for their allies and choose favourable fates and bear temporal magics to ensure victory

Hell the Hall of the novice itself outright states when no healing needs to be done, throw in damage spells


-----------------------------------
What do we healers want for our jobs?

1. Return of unique playstyles and iconic/fun abilities such as aero 3, varied cards, selene and so forth. End this horrible Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis spam!
2. More frequent amounts of healing required at all levels of gameplay. Make the potency boosts from expansion changes happen on level caps+1 (51, 61, 71, 81) so previous content isn't trivialised
3a White mage to stop being treated as baby's first healer and made into a strong elementalist that can stand on top
3b Scholar gets its dots and selene back with no more infighting between healing and damage
3c Astro have its cards, time magic and sects returned with slight tweaks so its shields stop fighting with sch and drk
3d Sage to get the dps actions it was promised
4. Better communication with the dev team regarding how the jobs will evolve. If the devs aren't sure how to expand healers, there's a wide range of players they could turn to for suggestions and ideas



We don't hate you Square enix, but the last 5 years have been horrific for healers and we want this to end.

Your attitude of "Go play ultimate" is utterly tone deaf and rude and you need to change this course if you want to stop bleeding healers. "We can't think of anything to do with scholar" was also incredibly dismissive when we spent years giving you feedback.

Yes healers get quite heated. You would be too if your role got treated with such disdain for years on end.

We're grateful for the odd scrap that gets thrown our way like dps neutral lillies. But we deserve better. We're a core part of the game alongside the dps and tanks. We don't want to be the 3rd role, we want to be healers.


My sub runs out in a few days after this update so I won't be able to update it after that. But I sure hope we find SE reversing course in the run up to 7.0 starting with astrologian's rework.
Keep the feedback alive guys.