Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[ASkellington]

Healing in FF14 feels better than any other MMO I have healed in (and I have healed in ever major MMO)

99% of the complaints seem to come from people that haven't healed in an MMO before this one.

Uh huh. I've healed in FFXIV, WoW, ESO, and some few Korean MMO who aren't even big enough to name save maybe ArcheAge and AA was mainly PvP. There are plenty of other healers who have much more extensive profiles than mine even going back to Ultima Online, Swtor, Ever Quest and so on.

Just because FFXIV's healers in some respects are better than other MMOs does not mean that it isn't bad or worse than others. WoW for instance has better DISTINCT healers with different healing styles than FFXIV by MILES. You can even compare FFXIV to itself when its PvP has better defined healers than its PvE.

[PirateRyanG]

Uh huh. I've healed in FFXIV, WoW, ESO, and some few Korean MMO who aren't even big enough to name save maybe ArcheAge and AA was mainly PvP. There are plenty of other healers who have much more extensive profiles than mine even going back to Ultima Online, Swtor, Ever Quest and so on.

Just because FFXIV's healers in some respects are better than other MMOs does not mean that it isn't bad or worse than others. WoW for instance has better DISTINCT healers with different healing styles than FFXIV by MILES. You can even compare FFXIV to itself when its PvP has better defined healers than its PvE.

ESO healing is 99% DPSing across 6-8 spells and 2 ULTs. You can't even target your healing spells. A good chunk of the spells that sit on your hotbars are never used, and they exist purely to provide boosts to the other spells (or speed up your ULT generation)

WOW nowadays is just a spam heal. It isn't engaging. You are busy healing, but nothing feels 'great' to heal.

[Midareyukki]

but nothing feels 'great' to heal

That sounds to me like you prefer old-school style healing, where you see the person's health bar shoot up and have high numbers?

At least, that's one of two things people refer to when they say "it feels great to heal". Either it's a fight that's comfortable to heal, or it stimulates the monkey brain by giving them big numbers.

But there's nothing wrong with a more passive kit. Because FF14 has a far more active kit where you do use 90% of your cooldowns on a target, and you STILL aren't going to use all of it during a fight. So neither situation is necessarily any better, as you end up with kits that either are too situational or just go by unused half the time because there's something better.

[ASkellington]

ESO healing is 99% DPSing across 6-8 spells and 2 ULTs. You can't even target your healing spells. A good chunk of the spells that sit on your hotbars are never used, and they exist purely to provide boosts to the other spells (or speed up your ULT generation)

WOW nowadays is just a spam heal. It isn't engaging. You are busy healing, but nothing feels 'great' to heal.

And yet Druid plays nothing like Shaman who plays nothing like Priest (either spec) who plays nothing like Monk. But here any differences between healer in how they heal have pretty much been stripped away since the start of Shb with the exception of AST since it still has several delayed heal abilities.

I don't care for ESO's healing, but at least there, if I didn't need as many healing spells I could still support my team with extra damage by subbing out skills. I hated the idea that some extra abilities were tied to sets/weapons effects, but give them credit - its unique to ESO and you CAN make playstyles around it that are fun to use even if they aren't competitive.

WoW has something FFXIV got rid of - resource management. The only classes in the entire game that really need to pay attention to mana is DRK (arguable) and BLM. Healer? I'm AST. I have Astrodyne to straight up REPLACE lucid dreaming on top of every draw giving me 500mp (down from 800 may I add). 90% of the abilities I use as ANY healer cost 0 mana meaning I only use it for Raises, in which case, you may as well remove raise from the role, give it to every class on a limit and remove MP while you're at it. And piety too, because its a useless bar that the vast majority of classes don't even engage in.

Job gauges for managing resources mean nothing atm because there is no meaningful choices to make for it so they're a piss poor replacement.

The Healing role has problems:

- for veteran healers either to FFXIV or to the role across MMOs there is nothing for them to get good at and therefor has lack luster enjoyment/engagement and when asked by said players to have some further enjoyment the developers have said - *look at title of this thread*
- healers barely have any distinction between the two of them in healing playstyles and are continually called either clones or "X but with"
- in several pieces of content from dungeons to savage you can run without them or with just one even when said content was current
- things in the past that had valid issues that only needed to be tweaked or have more thought put into them, were straight up removed instead (AST cards, Selene) and the mains of those affected classes were pretty much told by the devs themselves "no, you're wrong, our way is better" when they shouldn't have been removed to begin with

[IDontPetLalas]

And yet Druid plays nothing like Shaman who plays nothing like Priest (either spec) who plays nothing like Monk. But here any differences between healer in how they heal have pretty much been stripped away since the start of Shb with the exception of AST since it still has several delayed heal abilities.

I don't care for ESO's healing, but at least there, if I didn't need as many healing spells I could still support my team with extra damage by subbing out skills. I hated the idea that some extra abilities were tied to sets/weapons effects, but give them credit - its unique to ESO and you CAN make playstyles around it that are fun to use even if they aren't competitive.

*snip for length*
Job gauges for managing resources mean nothing atm because there is no meaningful choices to make for it so they're a piss poor replacement.

The Healing role has problems:

- for veteran healers either to FFXIV or to the role across MMOs there is nothing for them to get good at and therefor has lack luster enjoyment/engagement and when asked by said players to have some further enjoyment the developers have said - *look at title of this thread*
- healers barely have any distinction between the two of them in healing playstyles and are continually called either clones or "X but with"
- in several pieces of content from dungeons to savage you can run without them or with just one even when said content was current
- things in the past that had valid issues that only needed to be tweaked or have more thought put into them, were straight up removed instead (AST cards, Selene) and the mains of those affected classes were pretty much told by the devs themselves "no, you're wrong, our way is better" when they shouldn't have been removed to begin with

I'm really not a big fan of resource management, having played job/classes in other games where in some cases I almost couldn't look away from my gauge , my rotation had to be 100% spot-on otherwise my DPS would be ruined, my resource management would be borked. We're not talking top 1% of players, more an achievable top 25%. I wouldn't want that level of stress in normal content.

However, in everything else you wrote, very well summarized. I would only add that there is some difference in healers in PVP, and for those people who are tired of seeing the same template in PVE that can be refreshing.

[Midareyukki]

Healing in FF14 feels better than any other MMO I have healed in (and I have healed in ever major MMO)

99% of the complaints seem to come from people that haven't healed in an MMO before this one.

If it feels better than other MMOs, it doesn't necessarily mean it is better than other MMOs.

And I did play a healer build in GW2's Engineer before FF14. Sure, not the same, but it definitely felt far more engaging and the gimmicks were way more interesting and creative than what FF14 has, especially nowadays. 14's healing is basic and straightforward, and while there's nothing wrong with that approach (and actually makes things easier to grasp), it doesn't mean it's engaging.

And I look at older MMOs and the way they made their healers, and they for sure manage to do things differently and interestingly than anything Square's ever willing to try. A healer that makes use of damaging skills to heal people was something people asked for years ago, and the best they can give us is Kardia.

[ForteNightshade]

Healing in FF14 feels better than any other MMO I have healed in (and I have healed in ever major MMO)

99% of the complaints seem to come from people that haven't healed in an MMO before this one.

For the sake of playing devil's advocate, we'll take this at face value.

That still doesn't make FFXIV's healing feel great or engaging. When the overwhelming majority of content is casual, I shouldn't feel like a gimped DPS but that's precisely what I am. I've used this example plenty but it bears repeating: 500+ casts of Dosis III in Aglaia, on content, is absurd. I'm not a healer at that point. I'm the aforementioned gimped-DPS with a single button "rotation."

None of this is exclusive to casual content either. I never healed a full Savage tier until Asphodelos yet managed to clear every single fight, in PF, without a single GCD pressed. And before someone claimed I chadded. My co-healer and I combined for 97% in P4S. There's about as efficient as you can get without going into speed kill territory. The fact this is possible at the Savage level is ridiculous—made worse by having a single button to spam endlessly.

It speaks volumes when the director of the entire game has to beg people to "give healers a chance." Maybe, just maybe, he (and the dev team as a whole) should listen to actual dedicated healer players and not people who barely engage the role and think spamming Medica II for every raid wide is a good idea. Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if the response to this tier's uptick in damage leads to an easier third tier. Better to kick the can than address the entire healing design has been incredibly flawed for two expansions now.

[HyperiusUltima]

That still doesn't make FFXIV's healing feel great or engaging. When the overwhelming majority of content is casual. I shouldn't feel like a gimped DPS but that's precisely what I am. I've used this example plenty but it bears repeating. 500+ casts of Dosis III in Aglaia, on content, is absurd. I'm not a healer at that point. I'm the aforementioned gimped-DPS with a single button "rotation."

None of this is exclusive to casual content either. I literally never healed a full Savage tier until Asphodelos yet managed to clear every single fight, in PF, without a single GCD pressed. And before someone claimed I chadded. My co-healer and I combined for 97% in P4S. There's about as efficient as you can get without going into speed kill territory. The fact this is possible at the Savage level is ridiculous—made worse by having a single button to spam endlessly.

It speaks volumes when the director of the entire game has to beg people to "give healers a chance." Maybe, just maybe, he (and the dev team as a whole) should listen to actual dedicated healer players and not people who barely engage the role and think spamming Medica II for every raid wide is a good idea. Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if the response to this tier's uptick in damage leads to an easier third tier. Better to kick the can than address the entire healing design has been incredibly flawed for two expansions now.

Basically the same Echo Chamber we've been repeating ad nauseum since we figured it out in Shadowbringers. Even if he's not going to change healing mid-expansion, I want Yoshida and the battle team to know that we don't need anymore healing buttons - we need damage buttons to make healers great again. And honestly? I remember the time in Heavensward when I was playing WHM and didn't do much damage. That damage doesn't impact the raid until you MAKE IT impact the raid with high DPS checks, even at perfect play. Having those damage buttons provides more depth to healing than just "I'm just healing the damage then going back to pressing my 111111112."

Hell, even having a second DoT and a second damaging ability would provide more depth. If Yoshida and his team are worried about "complexity", they've got it all wrong. They should be more worried about "oversimplification", which leads to quite a dull experience if the healing portion of the game in particular isn't up to par with your DPS engagement. Looking at it from the casual player's standpoint, there could be intimidation on having more depth for some players; but in the past, using those buttons wasn't required even at Extreme level and rarely you'd need them for Savage unless you were doing Week 1 Prog; you were still focusing on healing and keeping the party alive. So for casuals, having more depth for DPS abilities doesn't impact them as much as it does people who are doing Extreme and Savage and Ultimate.

[FireMage]

You got it in one, hussy.
It's true: the healer role has been neglected for so long that the cracks are showing and YoshiP is starting to run out of excuses.

No, the truth was that if you want engaging content go do high end content. There, you've been properly educated, you're welcome

[Shurrikhan]

No, the truth was that if you want engaging content go do high end content. There, you've been properly educated, you're welcome

A much less arguable claim: If only the highest 1% of content can be engaging, the game's content design has serious issues.