Dear Square Enix, do something with GCD healing please.

[RinaShinomiya]

This has more to do with healer design in general but i feel like if Square isn't gonna listen to anything we say regarding getting more DPS abilities then maybe this might.

Why do healers have so many dedicated buttons to GCD healing & buffs dedicated to GCD healing yet we have no reason to use them since we get overpowered oGCD heals on very short cooldowns that cost 0 mana (which is a stat affected by our role exclusive Materia!!!) every expansion.
Instead of giving each healer a unique mechanic that rewards GCD healing with DPS, y'know rewarding us for doing our job, the devs would rather we spam the same 1 button over and over again while pressing oGCD heals whenever they come up. Why can't we have that 1 button spam and when we need to heal we GCD heal and then go into a combo that rewards us with DPS? I know, a outlandish idea.
I feel like this issue is being swept under the rug by many due to oGCD healing being the meta but it creates so many issues like hotbar bloat, homogenization etc.
Because GCD heals are a DPS negative of 250/295/310/330 potency depending on the healer of choice, most people end up ignoring those buttons unless they find themselves in situations where GCD healing is the only solution.

(1/3)

[RinaShinomiya]

Let's go by release order.
WHM currently has 10 buttons dedicated to GCD healing (11 if you count Misery) and 5 buttons dedicated to interacting with the GCD.
The full list is:
Cure, Cure II, Cure III, Medica, Medica II, Afflatus Solace, Afflatus Rapture, Regen, Esuna, Raise, Pressence of Mind, Thin Air, Plenary Indulgence, Temperance & Swiftcast.
That's between 15 or 16 Abilities which is literally half our toolkit and from the abilities I mentioned in optimized play you'd prefer to only use 3 of them, maybe 4 if you see Temperance more as a mitigation rather than GCD boost. Even in unoptimized play you'd probably use maybe 7 or 8. And you know what? If Misery wasn't a DPS loss those 4 unoptimized play buttons would be optimized. Crazy right?

SCH currently has 5 buttons dedicated to GCD healing (I don't count summoning the fairy even though those are GCD buttons) and 6 buttons dedicated to interacting with the GCD.
The full list is:
Physick, Resurrection, Adloquim, Succor, Esuna, Fey Illumination, Deployment Tactics, Emergency Tactics, Dissipation, Recitation and Swiftcast.
That is 11 buttons dedicated to something that's most optimally used during downtime or else it's a DPS loss. Not as bad as White Mage but that's still a third of the toolkit dedicated to something that isn't really used in optimized play and if used it's for different reasons, like Dissipation being a tiny DPS boost. But the more damning issue is that SCH is a barrier healer that's being punished for barrier healing.

AST currently has 8 buttons dedicated to GCD healing and 6 buttons dedicated to interacting with the GCD.
The full list is: Benefic, Benefic II, Aspected Benefic, Helios, Aspected Helios, Ascend, Macrocosmos, Esuna, Lightspeed, Synastry, Astrodyne, Horoscope, Neutral Sect & Swiftcast.
Similarly to WHM that's nearly half of AST's kit which wouldn't be as jarring if AST didn't need so much space dedicated to it's card mechanics. But unlike WHM there is no Lily mechanic trying to return 75% of DPS for GCD healing, in fact AST might have the most OP oGCD heals of them all. Synastry felt out of place in AST's toolkit forever and while Horoscope can still be used without a Helios cast, Neutral Sect does not. It can't even be used for mitigation only, you have to GCD heal with it.

SGE currently has 5 buttons dedicated to GCD healing and 4 buttons dedicated to interacting with the GCD, 5 if we include Toxicon.
The full list is: Dosis, Prognosis, Egeiro, Pneuma, Esuna, Eukrasia, Zoe, Pepsis & Swiftcast.
That's 9 or 10 Buttons and similarly to SCH a third of out toolkit of which we don't really use much during the fight.
(2/3)

[RinaShinomiya]

The point i'm trying to make here is that between half or third of each healers toolkit isn't used in current content because of being a DPS penalty, costing mana & simply not being needed to heal through most content in this game thanks to our OP oGCD taking care of the current healing requirements.
This is exactly why I personally found WHM to be the most fun healer in SHB, because it rewarded healing with DPS. Even if it was a DPS loss, that didn't matter to me, it felt satisfying. If it wasn't a DPS loss i'd feel even better about it. Meanwhile the overly focus on oGCD healing is what forced the Healer design into a corner and caused our button bloat in the first place. Many oGCD heals are just GCD heals on a cooldown. Does WHM really need a oGCD Cure II when they already have Afflatus Solace? Why can't Tetra just be a button that generates 1 lily. Why does Afflatus Solace & Cure II, Afflatus Rapture & Medica need to be separate buttons when they could just upgrade whenever a lily is available or not. Why does Thin Air exist at this point when most of our Heals are free anyway, it ends up being a "free Glare" button. WHM would play so much better if SE designed it around the lily system from the ground up.
Why does SCH have so many GCD healing buffs when it only has 3 GCD heals, well only 2 really since Physick is... Tataru's favorite button i guess. And again a system that rewards DPS for healing would go so far here. SCH has 2 Job gauges but only really uses 1. Why can't GCD healing reward Aetherflow (in combat) and Aetherflow abilities be all Damage dedicated. Using them then feeds into Fey gauge which unlocks powerful oGCD heals which you could use for pure healing, this way the player and the fairy have distinct roles. Barriers on the player and Pure heals on fairy.
As for AST, why is the class with the strongest oGCD heals also the busiest class from a oGCD standpoint? Wouldn't it make more sense to make its GCD healing kit more desirable so Card gameplay and healing don't clash?
SGE is arguably the most mobile healer even without Toxicon so I'd argue it should be changed to a DPS mechanic rather than mobility mechanic.

Then there are class-wide issues like Repose being useless outside 1 Role quest in SHB. Esuna being a rarely used button, Cure I, Benefic I, Physick & Diagnosis existing, Swiftcast only really being used in conjunction with Rez. Which is also something that's more punishing to the healer rather than rewarding, we lose a quarter of our mana for other people screwing up. Lucid dreaming being a boring way of restoring our Mana when a gameplay orientated version would be far more beneficial. For example why cant lilies apply a MP regen buff for 12s that restores MP like Lucid? I feel like Healer would have much more room to grow if our GCD healing kits wouldn't be so punishing to use. And if square wants us to only oGCD heal and press one button for the rest of our life then reduce the GCD bloat already.
(3/3)

[Navnav]

Agreed. Make oGCDs for utilities and buffs and give more gcds. That would help the issue of not healing enough, now it would force healers to actually use their gcd to heal, meaning less time to dps and more focus on healing.

I don't agree with seeing things as a dps penalty, rather it is better to just do dps where you can and that is it. Square should FULLY shift the focus to healing. A change like removing healing oGCDs would help a lot. Even if they left all healers dps buttons as normal but maybe gave them a few more short cd ogcd damage abilities so it instead doesn't hurt your healing.

Time to really change the perspective on healers, because you are meant to HEAL.

[Nizzi]

Agreed. Make oGCDs for utilities and buffs and give more gcds. That would help the issue of not healing enough, now it would force healers to actually use their gcd to heal, meaning less time to dps and more focus on healing.

I don't agree with seeing things as a dps penalty, rather it is better to just do dps where you can and that is it. Square should FULLY shift the focus to healing. A change like removing healing oGCDs would help a lot. Even if they left all healers dps buttons as normal but maybe gave them a few more short cd ogcd damage abilities so it instead doesn't hurt your healing.

Time to really change the perspective on healers, because you are meant to HEAL.

This is just completely wrong though and not at all how healers in FFXIV work. No matter how much Yoshida says this, the fights say otherwise - the game is not tuned for "just do some DPS where you can!" but instead for healers contributing as much DPS as possible. These fights are tuned around healer DPS. To see that this is the case, all we need to look at is the top E8S speedkill.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/qCnHW...pe=damage-done
This is the E8S Rank 1 Speedkill. The rDPS requirement for enrage is 90725 and this group logged 104357 rDPS. If you subtract the healers, 104357 - 20662, you end up with 83695 which is 7000 rDPS behind the enrage requirement for the fight. And these are the TOP players for the fight.

If the content was tuned around not requiring healer DPS or just having healers "DPS where they can", it wouldn't be impossible, if not close to impossible to clear even if you had 4 of the best DPS players and 2 of the best tank DPS on the planet. This is the core problem, healers are in fact not "meant to heal." The design encounters that they're sticking with demand that we DPS, and using our GCD healing is always a DPS penalty not just to ourselves, but to our entire party's potential clear.

[Navnav]

This is just completely wrong though and not at all how healers in FFXIV work. No matter how much Yoshida says this, the fights say otherwise - the game is not tuned for "just do some DPS where you can!" but instead for healers contributing as much DPS as possible. These fights are tuned around healer DPS. To see that this is the case, all we need to look at is the top E8S speedkill.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/qCnHW...pe=damage-done
This is the E8S Rank 1 Speedkill. The rDPS requirement for enrage is 90725 and this group logged 104357 rDPS. If you subtract the healers, 104357 - 20662, you end up with 83695 which is 7000 rDPS behind the enrage requirement for the fight. And these are the TOP players for the fight.

If the content was tuned around not requiring healer DPS or just having healers "DPS where they can", it wouldn't be impossible, if not close to impossible to clear even if you had 4 of the best DPS players and 2 of the best tank DPS on the planet. This is the core problem, healers are in fact not "meant to heal." The design encounters that they're sticking with demand that we DPS, and using our GCD healing is always a DPS penalty not just to ourselves, but to our entire party's potential clear.

You know something, I'm not completely against healers doing some damage during an enrage timer, but the whole fight isn't that is it? You are talking about speed kills also, not about simply kills, which is the big thing, just being able to take down the boss. You are forcing a point of view solely how a few wish to clear it on farm. There are much more players out there that will just be going in their to simply just kill it and learn it. Eitherway, I think this whole enrage timer argument needs to just die. You would think the enrage timer is 20 minutes of a 20 minutes fight.

I'm also not saying that healers need to ONLY heal. On WoW for instance I love throwing out some lava bursts on my shaman and contributing with some dps. But that is because I actually have to heal, so enjoy when I can dps, but i DO dps. In this game all your GCDs are spent on damaging abilities which to me is not necessarily what is required from the player or from square but from the community. If the healers would have simply done less damage, they would have cleared the fight still anyway.

Remove the oGCD healing, and leave each healer with only a few, and force them to cast heals, however make their damaging abilities hit harder, and give a couple of oGCD damage abilities. The way damage intake works in this game you don't even need oGCD heals. The GCD heals only approach would force players to now really think about their mana. It will simply be the best change.

[IruruCece]

On WoW for instance

If you love WoW so much, go play a healer there.

[Charganium]

You know something, I'm not completely against healers doing some damage during an enrage timer, but the whole fight isn't that is it? [...] You would think the enrage timer is 20 minutes of a 20 minutes fight.

It literally is.

[SnowVix]

You know something, I'm not completely against healers doing some damage during an enrage timer, but the whole fight isn't that is it?

Yes, the whole fight is an enrage timer. The enrage timer doesn't start at the 3x raidwide into longcast, that's just the timer hitting the countdown part.

[Halfgeeek]

This is just completely wrong though and not at all how healers in FFXIV work. No matter how much Yoshida says this, the fights say otherwise - the game is not tuned for "just do some DPS where you can!" but instead for healers contributing as much DPS as possible. These fights are tuned around healer DPS. To see that this is the case, all we need to look at is the top E8S speedkill.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/qCnHW...pe=damage-done
This is the E8S Rank 1 Speedkill. The rDPS requirement for enrage is 90725 and this group logged 104357 rDPS. If you subtract the healers, 104357 - 20662, you end up with 83695 which is 7000 rDPS behind the enrage requirement for the fight. And these are the TOP players for the fight.

If the content was tuned around not requiring healer DPS or just having healers "DPS where they can", it wouldn't be impossible, if not close to impossible to clear even if you had 4 of the best DPS players and 2 of the best tank DPS on the planet. This is the core problem, healers are in fact not "meant to heal." The design encounters that they're sticking with demand that we DPS, and using our GCD healing is always a DPS penalty not just to ourselves, but to our entire party's potential clear.

The devs don't actually intend for a clear at the min-ilvl without healers contributing major DPS. There was a JP interview on this topic years ago that I recently read over.

They design the raid based on expected DPS output of 4 DPS, 2 tanks, then adjust the requirements by X% so the healers have to contribute DPS, assuming other roles play perfectly.

The "healers just heal" thing only works once people over-gear content.

This is why they designed healers with one nuke GCD, and so many oGCD healing tools. The GCD has to constantly roll for Broil, Glare, etc. Healing in hard content is nearly all oGCD. The healer skill check is how good you are at dedicating GCDs towards dmg while keeping PT alive.

Some ppl dislike this design, and me too when I first started the game and while leveling. But my experience in Panda Savage has made me appreciate the more "simple" healer DPS design. Content that's fresh and at min ilvl is difficult enough for most healer players.

The downside is healing becomes quite boring once people get good and over-gear the content.

Edit: Just to counter OP, asking for a redesign of healers towards GCD healing, is a MASSIVE undertaking. Factor this: fights that are heavy on movement, would severely reduce healer's ability to heal, give they would be turret healers if using Cure 2, Adlo, etc. This would have to re-balance the entire game, from old to new encounters.. job imbalances would appear, since some healers have strong GCD healing mobility, etc. FF14 is not designed around WoW or other MMO healing gameplay.