Why is the healer class basically a one spell dps class?

[Lyth]

...

There's tends to be a fairly narrow perception of what 'buffs' and 'utility' entail. Buffs are really only interesting when there's some element of prioritization to them. Systematically clicking on players and applying 'damage up' is about as interesting as throwing rocks at the boss.

I think that buffs are most interesting when you're dealing with mutually exclusive ones which cannot directly be compared in terms of effectiveness (i.e. movement speed vs. regen). This works especially well with an aura or totem system, but none of the present healers have anything resembling this. It doesn't have to be particularly complex or involve lots of choices, as long as you're constantly required to re-evaluate what you have up.

[BrokentoothMarch]

The state of healers has been incredibly depressing since Heavensward, if we count hindsight. The overabundance and attention the other two classes get, especially DPS, in favor over healer could be advocated on the mere fact that there has been two major and paid expansions without a healer in sight while the promised "balancing concerns" turned out to be little more than gutting and homogenization of an already tenuous class.

I actually used to be a dedicated AST. As in, aside from DoH/DoL, I would exclusively play Astrologian as it was the only class I found fun, let alone out of the healer pool. After the ripping out of our identity (the cards) and a complete purge of any time magic, I can safely say I'm far more of a tank main, though even then that's during the rare times I'm not just plain crafting. WHM seemed unappealing and SCH felt like a crawl, many an expectation of mine let down because it turns out the fairies mean bugger all when it comes to strategic intrigue.

I honestly hate the notion of a "healer" class anyways. I've always advocated taking more of a "support" stance on it as that is what'll give us more options. With the introduction of Sage, however, it's becoming pretty apparent that healers are once again pigeonholed to healing and token DPSing, despite the fact that the introduction of Viera's made me hopeful that we would eventually see Green Mages that could shake up the healer role. However, it's just plain not going to happen. Despite the healing community regularly being on fire with obvious rejection (If anyone remembers the "Class Rework Satisfaction" poll from Stormblood days) of these decisions from the devs, the latter seem content to shove what they think is right down our throats. It's hard not to feel like there's just constant contempt for us, or at least me, when I identified strongly with the healing niche. Of course this results in further dwindling populations for healers. Who wants to play the class that feels like the devs hate anyone who tries to be more than a healbot.

The trust system, in my opinion really only asserted this further. They'd rather fix the queue times by just replacing players by what's essentially just legal bots instead of fixing the core issue which is the large majority disagreeing with how balancing is being done for healers and even tanks. DPS' simply run the show in their eyes and they get all the focus, yet even DPS mains aren't thrilled considering the poor queue times this results and, let's be real, I don't play an MMO to play with bots. I can't imagine they do either.

More of a rant than a tackling of the actual question, but the point is that: In my opinion, the devs simply don't care about healers. Sage exists because it's been since Heavensward since we've received a healer and even by neglectful standards, that's utterly ridiculous.

God bless those who still enjoy healing. They're better people than I.

[Ftail]

We shouldn’t complain about only having 1 DPS button, if SE catches wind of our complaints instead of giving us more buttons to use they’ll think they need to take it away instead. I’m scared guys.

[Ayche]

So what is the desired state truly? Hypothetically if there is extra dps that can only be attained by "doing healer role well", I will leave that definition to all whom it concerns, that gets snitched from [The basic damage spell of each healer job] right? Because I doubt Unit 3 was healers as a role to do more dps than they are currently doing, taking away "damage market share" from the rest in the full party, dps checks staying zero sum. Overhealing leads to lack of slack, lack of slack leads to no time to dps. That would be like reallocation of dps behind a skill barrier. You could throw dice to predict if that would boost healing popularity or snub it further.

And considering the party sizes that are inherent to FFXIV, healers (just like tanks and DPS) are forever meant to be super interchangeable with each other so truly decisive unique specializations are not going to happen anymore, especially with Sage bringing the count to four.

[Aluja89]

How embarrassing does it get for these class designers? A month+ old player already sees the flaw yet these veteran designers can't seem to figure it out.

[Acece]

Does utility even work in ffxiv? like speed buffs and cc. I've only started late stormblood so was there ever a use for them?

[Absurdity]

Does utility even work in ffxiv? like speed buffs and cc. I've only started late stormblood so was there ever a use for them?

Sure they "work" but with the engine and netcode being the way they are you can probably expect some delay on certain utility. Best example for what I mean would be Rescue where it takes about a second for the ability to actually register after you pressed it.


CC did have a place for a very very short time in early ARR dungeons, then SE nerfed them into the ground because people kept complaining about the difficulty and it simply became "pull everything and aoe it down" and consequently crowd control lost it's purpose.

[ty_taurus]

Sure they "work" but with the engine and netcode being the way they are you can probably expect some delay on certain utility. Best example for what I mean would be Rescue where it takes about a second for the ability to actually register after you pressed it.


CC did have a place for a very very short time in early ARR dungeons, then SE nerfed them into the ground because people kept complaining about the difficulty and it simply became "pull everything and aoe it down" and consequently crowd control lost it's purpose.

The sad thing is I feel like Utility and CC added a bit of character to the healers, even if it wasn't always important. And the thing is, we do still have some instances of utility that is useful without 'making things too difficult' such as the Stun on Holy. It's nice and useful against large pulls because you can delay their ability to damage the party. I miss having access to Miasma as a SCH that also inflicted Disease that reduced the healing enemies received. Sure, barely any enemies actually heal themselves, but it was piggybacked onto the DoT, so it wasn't just an empty button that never gets pressed *cough* Fluid Aura *cough*. There was no harm in just having that there and reaping the benefits for the few fights where it did matter, like Garuda EX.

I'd love to see some of that come back. There are a bunch of status effects I think would be nice to piggyback onto other, more consistent tools for the fun factor. Add in Confuse, Toad, Disease, Slow, and Blind. Attach them to tools that already function, and let us think about applying those things to enemies in Bozja or Fates while still getting to find value in those abilities during more regulated content.

[Kabooa]

CC did have a place for a very very short time in early ARR dungeons, then SE nerfed them into the ground because people kept complaining about the difficulty and it simply became "pull everything and aoe it down" and consequently crowd control lost it's purpose.

CC got removed because people were sleep-gating mobs. That in turn evolved into the standard two pack gates we see now.

[Rosa_Frandlia]

Sure they "work" but with the engine and netcode being the way they are you can probably expect some delay on certain utility. Best example for what I mean would be Rescue where it takes about a second for the ability to actually register after you pressed it.


CC did have a place for a very very short time in early ARR dungeons, then SE nerfed them into the ground because people kept complaining about the difficulty and it simply became "pull everything and aoe it down" and consequently crowd control lost it's purpose.

Did you forget Presence of Mind? Actually, making that as an aoe ability might be something they could look into as an upgrade to it. Also tanks and ranged dps have a slow in arm's length.