It's time to kill the argument that DPS abilities keep healers from healing.

[Truen]

FF14 healers are boring, overly basic, and suck bad to level from the ground up through content because people are left spamming 1 button 85% of the time.
This is the worst design I've ever seen. It's laughably stupid.

[IDontPetLalas]

*snip*

What I will agree with that everyone will blast me for is that healers should only be given a simple DPS rotation that is extremely difficult to screw up. It is what it is. I've remained steadfast about these thoughts for years now. I've stood by the dev's decision with this approach, and it isn't changing anytime soon. My experience with the difficulty in playing this role in FFXIV differs from what is expressed here. What I can admit to is my scope on healing is limited because I do not do relevant Savage or Ultimate, so I cannot speak about healing requirements for that level of difficulty. However, what I do know is that it would be difficult to call content "Extreme", "Savage", or "Ultimate" if a healer's kit is not needed to sustain DPS uptime.

And that's kind of it, isn't? You'll notice I said "sustain DPS uptime" and not increase it. Healer is a very unselfish role to play. Their healing kits provide sustainability to the entire group, which benefits everyone's DPS uptime by not letting anyone's hit or stay at zero, which ultimately benefits you. While I do think there are some wolves in sheep's clothing out there, who are just DPS players wanting quick queues; I do believe that most healers out there smashing that one button feel that their purpose in the group is next to nothing because their kits have become redundant. It is leaving players feeling this way, where I fault the devs a great deal.

Healers have to constantly deal with the rise and setting of the sun when it comes to their kits. The sun is at its highest when new content is released. Their purpose renewed. Then that sun gradually loses its brightness to the horizon. If there is anything the devs need to fix, it is this. More DPS buttons will not do this, and the healer mains out there know this in their gut.

Honestly, you completely lost me at the "unselfish role". There is no such thing. While each role should have its distinct identity, I do not believe that any role should very feel subservient to any other. Each role is equally entitled to its enjoyment in the game.

Support refers to specific abilities, this does mean that a role is less enjoyable, or is of lesser importance. Just as, for example, playing a tank implies that he or she is probably going to be the first person leading the group through the dungeon, but they are not the group "leader" or "boss". They still work with the group.

Regarding the specific comment on healers and DPS? I don't think I've seen anyone, anywhere ask for complexity anything approaching the complexity of many DPS rotations. However current healer rotations treat us like toddlers. I do believe that SE coulld move the scale a bit more to add more options. I underscore that they would be optional. If a healer does not DPS now an extra option or two won't change anything.

[Sebazy]

Yes, exactly, healers should be simple and difficult to fail at. No one else has control over the party like healers do, and when healers fail the party fails. If a tank misses a cd the healers can just heal or shield more. If a dps is struggling the rest of the party can do more dps and carry a bit. If a healer is struggling you can't do anything about it. You just have to wait until they learn it. And that feels bad for the other players and the healers.

Ok you've got my interest piqued with this one.

If the tank is failing and misses a cooldown, there's every chance that they will get one shot in Savage (Or at least die to an auto attack immediately after). If they don't position a mob or mechanic correctly, there's every chance that they will cleave the group in some form or another. This is something demonstrated as early as Brayflox in the mid 30s.

DPS failing is a slightly different kettle of fish as frankly, the DPS can get away without so much as a pulse for much of the game outside of very specific mechanics such as Restraint Collar & Lionshead in Baelsar's Wall but even then the requirements are extremely generous. Of course this all changes once the group hits Unreal, Extreme and beyond with enrages suddenly becoming a thing that exists.

A bad healer can be carried in fluff content too. I've healed dungeons as a RDM on occasion, I've even healed the occasional pull in a levelling dungeon as a BLM before now. With a decent tank, even a Dancer can fill in the gaps on a single pull pretty comfortably.

You kind of should know these things given your history which kind of has me curious TBH. Those logs were actually yours right?

[Gemina]

in fact whm got it worse, he got a useless skill that only worth if he gets hit 5 times during 15s for 180s( lets face it, that is a bad implemented skill),got thin air nerfed killing his mp management advantage.
sch got carbon copy skill from war and expedite which was so lackluster yoshida actually needed a lot to explain how good it is like he needed to sell this idea (which he did not do for the other jobs) and as a side remark it also had mitigation on the skill at the end also whether or not the fairy ai is responsive ,release will let us truly knows.

seriously fire the designers for the healers job and let people who actually play those jobs in other games develop, it clearly current developers and designers of the healers roles are slacking on their jobs.

This design team is responsible for putting one of the top performing mmos of all time on the market. I think firing them because you dislike a lily tree might be a bit extreme.

Now, I know your argument isn't just about a lily tree, but to view healing in FFXIV as so atrociously bad that people need to lose their jobs definitely leans too far in one direction. However, it still would be very interesting to hear from the devs what purpose is served with these questionable skills they are given, and why they think passive job gauges like with WHM and SCH are good designs.

It isn't just them. No one is asking them these kind of questions. All the interviews I watched of Yoshida from Mr. Happy, Zepla, Work2Game, even Mioni who is a healer main all seemed to have kissed Yoshi's feet and tread carefully with their questions as to not offend the man or something. If he is surrounded by yes-men, then how will the message ever get across? I wonder how or if you would act differently if allowed to interview Yoshida. Would you be as stern as you are here? Would you tell him his team deserves to be fired?

[Akiudo]

i'll be honest here, while i do see the want for more actual interaction instead of just spamming glare/whatever its called for other classes the fact of the matter is that a good 30-40% of raiding healer players allready fail miserably at that, you try getting even a green parse with an active time of <85% on anything but a healer, as a heal that might even be blue. it may be painfull to accept, but giving healers any kind of meaningfull dps interaction the bottom 25% of currently raiding healers (at the least) would either just stop raiding entirely or in the future contribute about half the dps they do now, basically killing these groups before they even pull.

[QooEr]

i'll be honest here, while i do see the want for more actual interaction instead of just spamming glare/whatever its called for other classes the fact of the matter is that a good 30-40% of raiding healer players allready fail miserably at that, you try getting even a green parse with an active time of <85% on anything but a healer, as a heal that might even be blue. it may be painfull to accept, but giving healers any kind of meaningfull dps interaction the bottom 25% of currently raiding healers (at the least) would either just stop raiding entirely or in the future contribute about half the dps they do now, basically killing these groups before they even pull.

i sincerely dont see the problem. that doesnt matter in casual content, and god forbid so called raiders learn basic game fundamentals like gcd uptime for high end content. sheesh

[FoxCh40s]

This design team is responsible for putting one of the top performing mmos of all time on the market. I think firing them because you dislike a lily tree might be a bit extreme.

Now, I know your argument isn't just about a lily tree, but to view healing in FFXIV as so atrociously bad that people need to lose their jobs definitely leans too far in one direction. However, it still would be very interesting to hear from the devs what purpose is served with these questionable skills they are given, and why they think passive job gauges like with WHM and SCH are good designs.

It isn't just them. No one is asking them these kind of questions. All the interviews I watched of Yoshida from Mr. Happy, Zepla, Work2Game, even Mioni who is a healer main all seemed to have kissed Yoshi's feet and tread carefully with their questions as to not offend the man or something. If he is surrounded by yes-men, then how will the message ever get across? I wonder how or if you would act differently if allowed to interview Yoshida. Would you be as stern as you are here? Would you tell him his team deserves to be fired?

I would tell him that their positions most certainly need to be re-evaluated. As Healing has been a constant issue and source of discussion since Heavensward.

They designed themselves into a corner with Scholar and White Mage so perfectly complementing each other in ARR, they had no idea how to make Astro fit into that equation they just made it do everything, and refused to make healers for another 8 years to fix the problem.

In addition, they took the lowest common denominator approach to fix and issue that didn't need fixing, and took the single most heavy handed approach to balancing Scholar.

Clearly the Dev team that handles Jobs doesn't even want to work on the healers, hence their "Eh, more healing abilities right? That's what healers do?"

They clearly don't even understand how the community plays them either.

[Gemina]

Honestly, you completely lost me at the "unselfish role". There is no such thing. While each role should have its distinct identity, I do not believe that any role should very feel subservient to any other. Each role is equally entitled to its enjoyment in the game.

Support refers to specific abilities, this does mean that a role is less enjoyable, or is of lesser importance. Just as, for example, playing a tank implies that he or she is probably going to be the first person leading the group through the dungeon, but they are not the group "leader" or "boss". They still work with the group.

Regarding the specific comment on healers and DPS? I don't think I've seen anyone, anywhere ask for complexity anything approaching the complexity of many DPS rotations. However current healer rotations treat us like toddlers. I do believe that SE coulld move the scale a bit more to add more options. I underscore that they would be optional. If a healer does not DPS now an extra option or two won't change anything.

You're mistaken if you think I am saying it is ok for a role to be subservient to others. That isn't where I was going with that at all, and if I did feel that way, it would be easier for me to believe that tanks and DPS roles are subservient to the healers in the game simply because as a healer main, I am biased towards them. I made it pretty clear in a previous post that all three roles are equally important in FFXIV if you want clears, and put the god complex in check.

As for healer DPS, I don't believe I said healers were asking for complex rotations anywhere, ever. However, what I have said is that as soon as you add more DPS skills, you also add more complexity to their playstyle. They have a skill for ST. They have a skill for AoE, and they have a DoT they need to upkeep. I am really unsure how you add anything to this without also adding complexity to healers by pure happenstance. This is about as basic as a rotation gets, so there is nowhere else to go but higher in terms of complexity.

What I am uncertain of, is if healers pushing for more complexity in healer gameplay are aware of encounters outside their own. So far this week, my raid roulettes threw me into Iconoclasm and Anamorphis. The healers in each of these encounters could not stay on their feet, making these clears extremely difficult to obtain. Our own feelings about how difficult these NM encounters are is entirely irrelevant, all that matters is that instances like this can and do happen; and so long as they do, I don't see complexity being added to healer gameplay. Not in the form of causing more damage anyway.

The last thing that I will bring up is that in those encounters, what also made them difficult to clear was the impatience from the other players. A good portion of the time it took to clear was outside of combat while waiting for replacements to the players who left. Hell, one replacement left immediately when he/she saw that the fight was being explained. That's not a guess either; the player deliberately said, "I don't have time for sucky players." and then bounced. When I zoom out, I don't see much reason to add complexity to healer gameplay because a portion of them are bored and hate the design choice. Not in terms of the overall health to the game. However, the role not being enjoyable for everyone who wants to play it should be a large concern, and I really don't know how much of it is.

[Akiudo]

i sincerely dont see the problem. that doesnt matter in casual content, and god forbid so called raiders learn basic game fundamentals like gcd uptime for high end content. sheesh

you don't see the problem because it's not yours. i totally agree it would be nice to get at least a bit "more" than heals got right now, but you can't simply ignore the people that allready have their hands full or you just change the complains from "heals are too easy and boring" to "i allready have to heal the group, now you seriously expect me to press more than two buttons to dps?" pissing off just as sizeable an amount of the playerbase

[CrimsonGunner]

This design team is responsible for putting one of the top performing mmos of all time on the market. I think firing them because you dislike a lily tree might be a bit extreme.

Now, I know your argument isn't just about a lily tree, but to view healing in FFXIV as so atrociously bad that people need to lose their jobs definitely leans too far in one direction. However, it still would be very interesting to hear from the devs what purpose is served with these questionable skills they are given, and why they think passive job gauges like with WHM and SCH are good designs.

It isn't just them. No one is asking them these kind of questions. All the interviews I watched of Yoshida from Mr. Happy, Zepla, Work2Game, even Mioni who is a healer main all seemed to have kissed Yoshi's feet and tread carefully with their questions as to not offend the man or something. If he is surrounded by yes-men, then how will the message ever get across? I wonder how or if you would act differently if allowed to interview Yoshida. Would you be as stern as you are here? Would you tell him his team deserves to be fired?

the fact that they are passive gauges are less of a problem ,the problem is the skills that barely use said gauges or almost no interaction with said gauges. look at sch fairy gauge it will serve only one skill which is atherpact.
whm has only 3 skills that actually use the lilies , il wait for sage to come out and see how much his skills interact with one another but my point is that the issue is the kit itself barely interacts with your gauge at all.
ast cards may have several skills that interact with the seal gauge but their kit don't represent the lore or the theme ast suppose to represent.

my stand may be too harse and true it might lean in one direction but given the "advanced" skills given to healers in EW showing how much "thought" was given to pick those selected skills and how they work, along the line of healers complains being ignored throughout shb and now in EW as well, unless they will pull a miracle in EW build or during said expansions they lost my sympathy and kindness. those are not FF healers we know and love in the series ,in fact they are not even FF14 healers if you played the job quests and saw their lores. tbh i would have loved if all the healers could actually evolve in EW and their identities and theme solidify more but it seems it won't happen.

also perhaps or perhaps not i will be so offensive in face to face but i will none the less question his decision about healers and talk to him about it.