Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[linayar]

Issue is this is literally a only a problem between the good players and the not so good players. Good players use their entire kit, self heals and mitigation and all. Poor players don't. I'm not against this idea mostly since it's pretty rare outside of statics to see the majority of the FFXIV playerbase using their entire kit.

Well, I do think the majority of the player base is the target for role and job designs usually. And thanks for the screenshot.

It would reduce downtime only marginally. I've spent enough time in PFs where absolutely nobody used Addle/ Feint/ ranged mitigation and even tank raid mitigation was sparse at best if used at all and all it did was force to hardcast here and there but usually still single digits for a ~10min fight. And in casual content, those skills don't get used at all.
All it would achieve is that healers get even more frustrated than they are now because they're getting even less bang for their bucks but they'd still try to squeeze out dps where they can. Even if it was a 10 potency skill, people would spam it. It's not just out of neccessity that healers spam dps skills, it's because nobody wants to feel useless by standing around more than half the fight without anything meaningful to do. Literally anything is better than standing around.
Heals are insanely powerful compared to incoming damage and good healers use skills like Neutral, SS or Cure III once in a blue moon even though they are powerful because it's simply overkill.

Your experience is with current damage distribution. That's why I said to also increase damage dealt by DPS and tank. If there are times in between heals, that's a filler in the fight that can be shortened by more damage (or less enemy HP I suppose). That said, some of the pacing has to do with allowing people time to think of mechanics, so downtime would still be there.

[Rilifane]

Well, I do think the majority of the player base is the target for role and job designs usually. And thanks for the screenshot.

Your experience is with current damage distribution. That's why I said to also increase damage dealt by DPS and tank. If there are times in between heals, that's a filler in the fight that can be shortened by more damage (or less enemy HP I suppose). That said, some of the pacing has to do with allowing people time to think of mechanics, so downtime would still be there.

Even if tanks and dps dealt 10x as much dps as a healer does and a fight is 2min instead of 10min, you would still have a significant amount of downtime as a healer. Because it doesn't change the fact that GCD heal is rarely required, not even with a party that doesn't mitigate. Unless you reasoning is "Well, if a fight is only 2min long and a healer spends one GCD on healing, they obviously spent more time of the fight healing than compared to one GCD in a 10min fight" - which is true but doesn't adress the core problem at all. Because significant amount downtime is still just that: significant amount of downtime that gets filled by spamming one button.
The insanely powerful heals relative to the low incoming damage is what causes most of the problems coupled with very little to fill the downtime caused by the strong heals, not how much dps a tank or dps deals.

[Rilifane]

The simplest solution is to remove DPS healing and mitigating abilities, at least reduce (if not remove) tank healing abilities (but leave them with mitigating abilities), and increase the damage for DPS (and to a lesser extent tank) relative to healer. The downtime between heals for healers would be reduced naturally just because the fight would go faster and there would be more need to heal and less need to deal damage because it would be a smaller percentage of party DPS.

Either way, hard to do or not, nothing they've done INCLUDING making healer damage abilities simpler (which actually encourages people to deal damage in between healing) says that they actually want healer to deal damage less and just be a "pure" healer. So I still say it's more about simplifying the role rather than a simple don't-do-DPS directive. Anecdotally, when I see that it's not uncommon for healers in roulettes (especially for full party and alliance, less so on light party) to be high on the enmity list (granted, healing also increases enmity), I don't think the game has ever said that healers should not deal damage.

It would reduce downtime only marginally. I've spent enough time in PFs where absolutely nobody used Addle/ Feint/ ranged mitigation and even tank raid mitigation was sparse at best if used at all and all it did was force to hardcast here and there but usually still single digits for a ~10min fight. And in casual content, those skills don't get used at all.
All it would achieve is that healers get even more frustrated than they are now because they're getting even less bang for their bucks but they'd still try to squeeze out dps where they can. Even if it was a 10 potency skill, people would spam it. It's not just out of neccessity that healers spam dps skills, it's because nobody wants to feel useless by standing around more than half the fight without anything meaningful to do. Literally anything is better than standing around.
Heals are insanely powerful compared to incoming damage and good healers use skills like Neutral, SS or Cure III once in a blue moon even though they are powerful because it's simply overkill.

[Recon1o6]

In order to fix healers, the devs need to ditch this pure healer mindset as it flat out doesn't work. They tried it in SB with WHM and the job was abandoned in droves. They've doubled down on it again this expansion and healers have been making threads like this since shb launch. Yet STILL the devs don't listen.

Healers need to be developed along their previous lines, but have their flaws from previous expansions fixed.

Sch having lots of dots and debuffs, a pet that assists their healing. Not this clunky mess thats glitching out constantly
Whm having proc based or buffing based high potency attacks using the elements. Direct and powerful, but fun
Ast having varied buffs and the ability to extend the duration. They could also allow dot extensions too to put more emphasis on the time portion of their identity that was stripped

This is what healers want as a minimum going forward. Ask around and you won't find a healer whose opposed to having to heal more

Having a fun downtime doing dps and having plenty to heal are not mutually exclusive

[ItMe]

Ast having varied buffs

Please don't speak for everyone.
I would hate this.

[Vahlnir]

Please don't speak for everyone.
I would hate this.

I mean, this was the way it was first introduced. And a lot of people liked it.

[ItMe]

I mean, this was the way it was first introduced. And a lot of people liked it.

You're right. That is the way it was introduced.
But that's not really relevant to the fact that she's making overly broad sweeping statements about what all healers want.

[Semirhage]

In order to fix healers, the devs need to ditch this pure healer mindset as it flat out doesn't work. They tried it in SB with WHM and the job was abandoned in droves. They've doubled down on it again this expansion and healers have been making threads like this since shb launch. Yet STILL the devs don't listen.

Healers need to be developed along their previous lines, but have their flaws from previous expansions fixed.

Sch having lots of dots and debuffs, a pet that assists their healing. Not this clunky mess thats glitching out constantly
Whm having proc based or buffing based high potency attacks using the elements. Direct and powerful, but fun
Ast having varied buffs and the ability to extend the duration. They could also allow dot extensions too to put more emphasis on the time portion of their identity that was stripped

This is what healers want as a minimum going forward. Ask around and you won't find a healer whose opposed to having to heal more

Having a fun downtime doing dps and having plenty to heal are not mutually exclusive

This is essentially my opinion. I've been arguing against "It's 100% the encounter design" for a while now. Changing encounter design would definitely fix some things. Here's what it wouldn't fix:
- Boring Glare/Broil/Malefic spammy solo duties
- The reward for gaining skill (i.e. when you've figured out how to cut down on your healing uptime, your reward is....spamming one spell over and over again)

I have no idea how anyone can look at design based around one single attack spell and one single dot and think "Nah this is fine, it's just encounter design that needs to change so we can ignore how much of a joke this offense kit is"

Change them both.

[Aomine1992]

The problem with healers is more specifically the communities fault, it all started in HW with the shunning of non dps healers, and the over use of dps, healers. There wasn’t a good middle ground so people complained about the lack of healing and less about the lack of healer dps.

Along with the devs making all healers alike has pushed us to this bad point to where healing needs to be completely new for the next expansion.

I personally play AST and though many dislike how it is now, I like the card system now. Simply every card means something and less button bloat. That is purely my opinion not every other AST. I wish healer dps was a little better or had healing baked into some kind of dps combo like how earthly start and assize operate but more like a dps combo.

[Laphicet]

every card means something

Every card means something by having it's very lore stripped from it and being forced to be lolbalance.

The ewer refreshes and clear's one's mind... by making you do more damage.

The Bole, the matron, protects and shelters... by making you do more damage.

The Arrow guides those who are lost and confused... by making you do more damage.

The Lord and The Lady were butchered as well, from being defenders of each heaven to MOREDAMAGELOL.

Because everything needs to be Balance Balance Balance! got to appease those speedkill raiders! Who cares about the lore! Oh but we can't make blue mage a real job because lore reasons.


EDIT: Not to forget how a good bit of the quest dialogue is meaningless now.. Royal Road? Spread? Holding a fortune for later use? The gravity of the situation? bah, who cares about that it's all the ramblings of a silly elezen who doesn't know what he's talking about. All that stuff about each constellation doing its own thing and the things it stands for? nah man it just means M O R E D A M A G E! Lady Leveva is too young to know what she's talking about anyway LOL!