Do healers have to be easy to play?

[Limonia]

When picking up a healer class, it's already very easy. But that's alright, first not to scare away people from playing them, and secondly to not overwhelm new players. The DPS classes also start very easy.

The main difference is that while most DPS jobs get some kind of depth or complexity by getting their rotation expanded (some are quite easy to play even with less practice, but others at least need you to pay attention to do halfway decent DPS), healers don't.

Healers, instead of becoming more complex, become easier to play with higher level and better gear.

Now, not considering the DPS part of healing, but just the healing aspect, when you get stronger healing tools, especially the oGCD heals, healing obviously gets easier, because you obviously have more tools to heal damage faster. Even though the encounters (talking about casual content here, because in savage you would try more than the minimum anyway) don't become that much harder. But this is natural.

Adding DPS, it doesn't even get harder directly. You can misjudge when it's safe to DPS, but when you're not sure if it is (because you're new for example), you can just choose not to, and cast a safety heal instead. Meaning, as long as you put in some effort, it's perfectly alright not to maximize your DPS as a new player, or in new content, or with a struggling party for example. Like some people give the advice 'at least try to keep up your DoT'.

What I don't understand about this all is how there are players that still find healing very challenging, when you can get away with only ever casting your GCD heals - and take that as a reason to be against healing being more involving.

I mean, you can't make healing casual content so hard that new (or bad) players are totally unable to clear the content. And if all your party members don't know the mechanics you will have a difficult time keeping them alive even if you're a veteran. So the actual direct healing part of it must stay manageable. Only the 'becoming more efficient' part of it can become more complex. Things that get you more time to DPS. Which in turn could also become a little more complex without making playing healers become that much more difficult.

But there are STILL topics about how healer DPS is already challenging enough as it is, and how people couldn't keep up if it were even slightly more complex (even if it was in the past and people managed with less oGCD heals as well). How having any kind of proactive instead of reactive healing would be too much for them to handle (that's why some ASTs don't use Earthly Star I guess). There are people who, even though they would welcome a little more complexity, defend this attitude by saying that at least one healer should stay very simple for the casual players.
Of course people suggest that this healer should be WHM. Even though WHM would be the best example for more complex DPS, BECAUSE it has the least buttons and no extra mechanic to concentrate on. But no, it absolutely NEEDS to be easy and accessible, and even more so at max level - it's not allowed to need some thinking to get more than the basics out of it.

A DPS player that doesn't care about their rotation just presses whatever buttons they want to. But when there are suggestions about making healer DPS a little more engaging, people cry about how they want healers to be really easy to play. Healers would become a bit harder to master, but for players who have no interest in that not much would change, wouldn't it? It would only change for those who find pressing Glare/Broil/Malefic too boring.

What do you think about the difficulty of the healers?

[GrimGale]

It's very easy to fulfill the healer baseline role. If you stood there spamming your heals you'd essentially be maximizing your contribution to healing. Problem is, overhealing, by it's nature doesn't contribute to the progression of your party.

In FFXIV's healing there is barely any triage, since all healer job posses very strong and cheap AoE healing spells that allow players to blanket the whole raid with a single cast. MP management has also become much more accessible with strong tools to recover MP essentially integrated into the Job design. (Draw restores MP, Aetherflow/Energy Drain, Free MP healing abilities such as Lillies, Celestial Opposition, Fairy, etc.)

These changes make so that healers are allowed much more time to do anything but heal.

They have the MP, they have the time.

Healer design is essentially made so healers have time and resources to spare. Which in turn makes comparatively easier for them to juggle between keeping track of health bars, boss mechanics, and their own dps.

I suppose the designer team thought we would be overwhelmed if we had to constantly be triaging through wounded and dodging aoe at the same time.

That being said, I think the current game. design of healers does allow for an expansion of the gameplay during the prevalent healing downtime. In fact, healers already have distinct unique things to do, implied or not, during downtime:

WHM is a nuker, SCH is a debuffer and AST is a buffer.

They could stand to have that part of their gameplay expanded.

[glamazon]

This is what I don’t understand. There are three healers. One can be easy one intermediate and the third could be difficult. Some people enjoy more complexity. Give it to them and you still have white mage for easy healing. This helps everyone.

The same can be for all roles easy intermediate and difficult. This would do more for player interest. Also it doesn’t mean one or another is more powerful it just means the skill level to play effectively is higher.

[EmmetOtter]

If healers are going to be given a larger dps toolkit, shouldn't dps also be given a larger healing toolkit as well? There's a balance issue here. Why play a glass cannon dps that can't survive a fight without a tank and a healer, if you can be a healer that's almost as good in damage but much easier to keep alive? Perhaps BLM should be given Physick, Esuna and some AOE-heals?

[ItMe]

I don't think the mechanics of healing itself should be difficult.
Healing doesn't have to be hard. When that's the backbone of keeping the party alive it's fine that inefficient healing can still get you through most content.

[Jaelommiss]

If healers are going to be given a larger dps toolkit, shouldn't dps also be given a larger healing toolkit as well? There's a balance issue here. Why play a glass cannon dps that can't survive a fight without a tank and a healer, if you can be a healer that's almost as good in damage but much easier to keep alive? Perhaps BLM should be given Physick, Esuna and some AOE-heals?

Simply put, no.

Enhancing healers' damage kits does not expand their scope. Healers can currently deal damage. There is no reason that a more interesting set of damage abilities must increase their offensive output. Adding significant healing resources to damage classes would expand their scope. Equating the two is fallacious.

Additionally, healers are the only role in the game that face significant periods of time where they are not engaged in their primary role. To occupy this downtime (which can be up to 100% of GCDs in a fight) healers are given a handful of basic attacks with no interconnectedness. Tanks and dps are given robust offensive capabilities that interact with one another so that they are meaningfully engaged at all times. There's no reason for healers to be condemned to repetitive and tedious play.

[Recon1o6]

Something the OP isn't quite clear on: healers should be easy to learn but harder to master

We have conjurer, that is the tutorial healer. Learn on conjurer, and then new healers should be able to pick up the other jobs. This ensures a solid base with a healing kit, and hopefully encouraged dps in downtime.
the healer jobs are just that-jobs, they should be engaging with unique kits and playstyles. by all means make WHM the easiest healer as it has conjurer as a base class. But WHM must be more difficult than babies first healer, its a full job, it should be harder than that. Otherwise you will just get bored whm's

[Limonia]

This is what I don’t understand. There are three healers. One can be easy one intermediate and the third could be difficult. Some people enjoy more complexity. Give it to them and you still have white mage for easy healing. This helps everyone.

It doesn't help me though. I enjoy the aesthetics of WHM. I would also enjoy a healer that does more than cast a simple heal after a raid-wide AoE.

What I mean is, why do the WHM mains that want more engaging gameplay have to get punished? Why would I have to change to another healer if I want not to fall asleep while playing?

IF one healer must be simple, then either only CNJ until you get WHM, or whatever new healer will get released instead of an existing one.

My point in the OP was that as long as the basic task of healing stays the same, and it must, the 'skill ceiling' can be higher without hurting the less skilled players. The problem is that whenever someone suggests to give healers some sort of more complex DPS or buffs, people complain that it gets too difficult for them, even though it actually doesn't, because it only gets more complex for those who are willing to do more than the basics.

[Ilyrian]

The same can be for all roles easy intermediate and difficult. This would do more for player interest. Also it doesn’t mean one or another is more powerful it just means the skill level to play effectively is higher.

Preventative healing (i.e shields) is arguably easier than reactive healing. Blanketing a raid with shields to mitigate a player's mistakes before they happen is easier than reacting to player error whilst the healer is also having to navigate the same mechanics.

[Ilyrian]

WHM is a nuker, SCH is a debuffer and AST is a buffer.

In theory that should work but the issue would be how the WHM's damage is weighed against the buffs and the debuffs.
As the party size grows the collective buffed damage of the group/debuffed boss would easily outweigh the WHM damage output otherwise you'd have to scale WHM through the roof which would make them OP solo.
It would just lead to another mandatory SCH/AST meta.