The Problem With Healers as a Role Withing FFXIV

[Garten]

I have not still read all the posts yet, but coming from similar discussions i think that in this game there Is only a solution:

Give healer a "decent" dps rotation. Embrace the healer/dps.

Than make casual content so that It requires like a BIT of healer dps. The reward for dpsing more when you master the healing side/not making mistakes Is the faster clear of mobs/fights.

Then.. going towards harder and Savage fights you: increase healing or dps requirement or both.

[Kabooa]

Pretending dps have become as simple to play as healers is definitely disingenuous.

Dps still keep me engaged because you're meant to be constantly pressing buttons and there's enough of a balance of abilities that it stays reasonably interesting. It's spread out over your toolkit with a variety of oGCD's, combos, procs, buffs, debuffs and DoT's. Some dps like SAM are strict on rotation and BLM is punished more this expansion for dropping Eno. Dps aren't extremely complex, but they're fun.

If you glance at abilities used for most classes including tanks, most single abilities (including oGCD's) aren't higher than 11-15% of the total actions used. BLM is an exception with around 30% on Fire IV but at least that requires monitoring your windows and Eno. ...And then you have healers, with 50-60% of their total actions used generally being that single mindless dps button. That's not engaging gameplay. Nor is the alternative of do absolutely nothing because no one needs healing all the time.

1-2-3 static combos are no more complicated or complex than 1111 spam. There are a few exceptions, but it has little to do with the GCDs themselves and more the overarching class mechanics in question (Such as Enochian or Sen). Most OGCDs are pressed on cooldown and your only requirement to them is that you pay a little bit of attention to when they come off cooldown.

It is disingenuous to say that "DPS/Tanks have been reduced to the same level of complexity as healers", but I didn't say that.

I said it's disingenuous to say *points above*. I said this before, but button count =/= complexity. Spamming Glare is just as complex as the 10-step Dragoon combo, which makes up around 60% of their actions used, and it wouldn't surprise me to see this ratio across more of the jobs, like Machinist, and no one's going to call that lump complex.

Agreed, but I think the extent of that reduction was the point there.

If we're going to talk about the extent of reduction, the healers don't win. That probably goes to Warrior, Dark Knight, Scholar, Monk, Bard, Machinist, and Ninja given their fall from grace in Heavensward. I'd also add Dragoon there, because HW Geirskogul was great and we need more design like that.

The healers lost Cleric Stance. White mage lost a DoT, Astro lost a DoT and a card system with the breadth of the ocean and the depth of a puddle.

And boy howdy, I shouldn't need to tell you that putting Scholar on their pedestal would be a bad idea.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd also add Dragoon there, because HW Geirskogul was great and we need more design like that.

Dangit, Kabooa, that wound had only just healed.

For the rest, just going to extend a bit.

White mage lost a DoT, Astro lost a DoT and a card system with the breadth of the ocean and the depth of a puddle.

WHM lost 2 DoTs, technically, as for a time A1, A2, and A3 could all be individually up (with only A1 being instant cast, iirc, and A3 a 3s cast).

While it's true AST's card system could be a lake long while still hardly proffering a drink, it was only 2 balance changes (balance your cards, balance your RRs) and a mechanical change (RR being manually usable to affect the card most recently cast, instead of automatically affecting next card cast) from having massive potential.

And, since Scholar is still technically a healer... that's another 2 DoTs, Bane, and pet micro-management.

Spamming Glare is just as complex as the 10-step Dragoon combo

Sadly true. But we here do love to point at our button count (well, bloat) and flex mightily.

Look at all these buttons! Mythic raiders couldn't touch this!
...Dynamic priority orders? The heck are those?

[Kabooa]

WHM lost 2 DoTs, technically, as for a time A1, A2, and A3 could all be individually up (with only A1 being instant cast, iirc, and A3 a 3s cast).

Ah, right. For some reason I thought Stone 3 eclipsed A1, which is why it eventually folded into A2, but that might have been the potency rebalance moving into Stormblood.

That said, everyone has lost DoTs, except for...Paladin, Black Mage, and Bard.

Scourge, Fracture, Touch of Death, Mutilate, Phelbotomize, Lead Shot, etc. Bard never hits them after the first application (And at this point, I'll be surprised if Iron Jaws doesn't just auto apply both in Endwalker), so that's technically as good as having lost one. What more can be said about how DoTs are viewed when the most DoT centric class in the game avoids pushing the actual DoT buttons? (Except in AOE)

I included Scholar in the main group because while I personally don't find dot management engaging, the loss of Selene, SF/SS exclusion, AF management, and overpowered Shield management were still heavy enough blows to warrant it.

[Shurrikhan]

Iron Jaws...

...was just the dumbest ability, except perhaps for nearly doubling the duration of DoTs themselves, in terms of button-press diversity. It felt decent back at 18s in multi-DoTing, but otherwise it was just... bloat.

An extra HS per ~18s (later ~30s), albeit at expense of WB's own direct damage? We're paying a button for... that? In single-target? Would have much preferred it to be a Repertoire spender on a dynamic (song-dependent action) key.

I included Scholar in the main group because while I personally don't find dot management engaging, the loss of Selene, SF/SS exclusion, AF management, and overpowered Shield management were still heavy enough blows to warrant it.

Agreed. For my part I only found DoT management on healers interesting in (1) its interaction with Cleric Stance when tracking your co-healers DoTs, too, so you'd know when to switch in and out and/or (2) in the presence of Bane (though I'd still have revised it to have more nuance available).

Honestly, I really wish WHM, for instance, had taken a different approach from the start, such that its plethora of DoTs weren't just DoTs (and, being just DoTs, didn't so quickly arrive at the chopping block). Where's the whole Wind, Water, and Earth aspect those could have played into?
...But, that might involve indirect (doesn't just offer 5% more damage to raid, etc.) utility that'd have to be mindfully used to get increased throughput from, so... can't have that.

[Dearche]

I included Scholar in the main group because while I personally don't find dot management engaging, the loss of Selene, SF/SS exclusion, AF management, and overpowered Shield management were still heavy enough blows to warrant it.

I agree that dot management itself wasn't very intersting. I definately wouldn't want to play a DPS that was entirely based around managing a whole bunch of dots.

That said, what made SCH so fun for me all the way up to and including SB was that the dots, combined with Cleric Stance, created a fun juggle between DPSing and healing. Every time you started a fight, you'd race to put on all your dots along with bane and some AOE damage with cleric stance on, then turn it off to heal the tank back up for whatever is lost. It was basically playing 'how low can you go' all the time.

But the Cleric Stance twist was what it so fun to me. Because even though SCH had so many oGCDs, you couldn't effectively use them until you turned Cleric Stance off. Percentage based Lustrate was good as it could be used to fix your own mistakes, though they got rid of that because SE probably thought that healers shouldn't be spending so much time in Cleric Stance.

While SCH was definitely overpowered in pretty much every iteration (including ShB though to a lesser degree), it's pretty obvious that SE has no idea what they're doing in regards to dealing with that, as the abundance of oGCDs and lack of meaningful GCD heals is the real culprit, and instead SE just removed SCH's DPS options.

[Dearche]

doesn't just offer 5% more damage to raid, etc.

You know, the terrifying thing is that healers, despite having half the damage potency of a DPS, actually manages between a third and half the average damage of any given DPS in actual raids. While healing. According to FFLogs. That's close to 15% of all raid damage, not the 5% you mentioned.

For me, that's really telling the state of healing in duties once you consider that almost all our DPS options are GCDs (WHM being the only one with oGCD damage abilities). It's really hard to call ourselves dedicated healers when 90% of our GCDs are being used to deal damage.

[Kabooa]

While SCH was definitely overpowered in pretty much every iteration (including ShB though to a lesser degree), it's pretty obvious that SE has no idea what they're doing in regards to dealing with that, as the abundance of oGCDs and lack of meaningful GCD heals is the real culprit, and instead SE just removed SCH's DPS options.

There's a few reasons to think it might be better this time around, but far too much history to point at that will show, at least, a rough beginning.

Each healer having its own variant of Cleric Stance returned would be good, IMO.

Give White Mage Seraph Strike.

Have Dissipation eat the current Faerie to give a bonus based on which one was eaten, while summoning the other. So you'd spend, say, 30s of Empowered Healing with 30s of Empowered Damage. Utilize both yours and the current Faerie's abilities, delay moving into the next phase if you need to, and work this in a tight 30 second loop.

And uh..something for Astro. Don't really got a good off-the-cuff suggestions for this one.

[Shurrikhan]

That's close to 15% of all raid damage, not the 5% you mentioned..

...I'm talking about the design of a given buff in a job toolkit, comparing the possibilities of other forms of utility against straight effective damage buffs like Brotherhood or Chain Stratagem...

I never said healers do only 5% of the raid's damage.

??????

[Dearche]

There's a few reasons to think it might be better this time around, but far too much history to point at that will show, at least, a rough beginning.

Each healer having its own variant of Cleric Stance returned would be good, IMO.

Give White Mage Seraph Strike.

Have Dissipation eat the current Faerie to give a bonus based on which one was eaten, while summoning the other. So you'd spend, say, 30s of Empowered Healing with 30s of Empowered Damage. Utilize both yours and the current Faerie's abilities, delay moving into the next phase if you need to, and work this in a tight 30 second loop.

And uh..something for Astro. Don't really got a good off-the-cuff suggestions for this one.

To be honest, single skills to get increased offensive capacity won't really do much. It'll just add one more button to the current monotomy we have. It's something, but not anything which could be considered interesting to play.

What the healers need is a proper system for dealing damage or support, as well as for healing. Not just a jumble of random oGCDs, but things that synergize with each other so that you'd want to use each skill in certain ways and in certain orders outside of just hitting them based on what's not on CD.

...I'm talking about the design of a given buff in a job toolkit, comparing the possibilities of other forms of utility against straight effective damage buffs like Brotherhood or Chain Stratagem...

I never said healers do only 5% of the raid's damage.

??????

Sorry, looks like I misread your post.