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

[QooEr]

I'm all about giving healers more downtime options instead of just upping the damage (as downtime happens everywhere) but one thing is caring for accesibility and another different one is having a completely unbalanced healing, having easier dungeons while leveling and good tutorials are for accesibility, echo is for accesibility, having all the max level dungeons, both of the current extremes and the first floor of the current savage tier cleared without healers is a case of unbalanced healing.

to add on this, the first and last boss of lv81 dungeon is actually a lot of fun to heal. its not even extreme level healing but it still requires a lot more healing than the usual normal stuff. if a player can get through zot, why did they make every dungeon and normal trial and normal raid and even EX1 require so much less healing to the point healers arent even needed? i was pleasantly surprised by this first dungeon, but was quickly disappointed again by the rest of the endwalker content.

[Atelier-Bagur]

to add on this, the first and last boss of lv81 dungeon is actually a lot of fun to heal. its not even extreme level healing but it still requires a lot more healing than the usual normal stuff. if a player can get through zot, why did they make every dungeon and normal trial and normal raid and even EX1 require so much less healing to the point healers arent even needed? i was pleasantly surprised by this first dungeon, but was quickly disappointed again by the rest of the endwalker content.

uh...I'm gonna disagree on that, to me the rest of the current dungeon designs the mobs and bosses still pack a punch if you're not too careful with keeping the tank alive so I still wind up using most of my healing abilities than aiding on dps. Just my experience when I leveled up healer classes via lv.81-90 dungeons.

[Rika007]

Peak of "rotations" indeed, absolutely nothing to do with the rotation of other healers


(Both images are from SAVAGE btw)

Its painfully obvious who talks with and without knowledge about the reality of healers

LOL this needs to be just copy pasted everytime the dev team or the current proponents of healer design try to point at Sage and Savage as their reason for other healers being the way they are.

[SieyaM]

Healers have ALWAYS been green dps in FFXIV, and I sure hope it won't change, although I wouldn't mind more engaging healing.

While healers have always done damage, they were not always this DPS heavy. In 2.0 and 3.0 the number of abilities, especially oGCD abilities, were far fewer and you fell into GCD healing more. Also when cleric stance was a thing you needed to think ahead about when you could afford to DPS without letting the party go down. Over all encounter design and healer design have leaned so heavily towards DPS uptime that healing, or anything else for that matter, has been merely an afterthought. I really doubt anyone during development now is thinking about how to heal an encounter, just how can we keep them from DPSing this thing down too quickly and what instant death mechanics can we use.

[Caurcas]

Please look forward to healers being a one button job. Don't be mad, it's being made accessible and that is good. To think other wise is to be an elitist who needs to pack up their bags and move on. Clearly they would not be welcome in our welcoming community!

[Chopstix]

just gonna leave this right here

[SeverianLyonesse]

having all the max level dungeons, both of the current extremes and the first floor of the current savage tier cleared without healers is a case of unbalanced healing.

Okay, now that you point this out I will concede that damage needs to be upped as well. Otherwise we might as well just switch to a holy binity.

This does bring up an interesting question, though. Past MMOs devolved into the holy trinity due to how players elected to prioritize roles when given full control over role kits and party composition. But FFXIV forces jobs into roles, and moreover forces party composition in a lot of instances (like, for example. forcing random parties to have a Tank, Healer, Melee DPS, and Ranged DPS). I'm wondering if this could be leaned into further and new roles created as part of mandatory content balancing.

[Deceptus]

to add on this, the first and last boss of lv81 dungeon is actually a lot of fun to heal. its not even extreme level healing but it still requires a lot more healing than the usual normal stuff. if a player can get through zot, why did they make every dungeon and normal trial and normal raid and even EX1 require so much less healing to the point healers arent even needed? i was pleasantly surprised by this first dungeon, but was quickly disappointed again by the rest of the endwalker content.

Sadly leveling dungeons often require much more healing that max level dungeons and EX content. Been that way for a while.

just gonna leave this right here

This is 100% meaningless because the Adventurer in Need doesn't update in real time.

Often times you'll see a tank in need, queue up and have a 1-5 min wait. See that, swap to healer, instant queue.

This is almost universally always true for Expert Dungeon, 5678, and leveling.

[Eriane_Elis]

People talk about how healers aren't so necessary anymore but they ignore how party finder can queue you with the most horrible tank and DPS making you use everything and run low on mp because that's just how those days are. The best are the tanks that party with you in low level dungeons with undergeared equipment, no materia and do wall to wall pulls and don't stop to let your mp recover and then yell at you why you let them die. Let's not forget about the black mages that refuse to leave their little magic circle for more DPS when the AOE might instantly kill them lol

Forget Ultimate content, just use party finder and see how bad randoms can be for that spicy challenge!

[Ixon]

While I am not disagreeing with any healers sentiment for more of a challenge with their jobs both healing and dps wise, I feel a lot of people are missing the wide scope this game caters to that leads to what we have today. The game, from a business and therefore profit standpoint, must cater to as many people as possible. This is from the less than 8 hour a week casuals(which do make enough of a significant portion to be counted), and the 40+ hour week hardcore players. Now I consider myself a semi-hardcore tank main, and I find tanking to be boring at times, with not enough to challenge my ability to tank even in the most recent raid tier and often find myself asking for more within my job and role.

However, I am a casual when it comes to healing. I do it only every once in a while when I am bored, and only really enjoy playing SGE. With that in mind, even doing the very simple dungeons we have received this expansion and the 1 button damage, 1 button dot that most healer kits have, I find it(from a casual audience point of view), just enough to keep me engaged. Now this is on SGE, which has more DPS options and some tech with Eukrasian Diagnosis for dungeons, but for someone like me, that's all I could ever want. Anymore would be a bit much for someone who still wants to do a good job even on a job/role that I am mediocre with(dropped dot? not me). I say this because as a healer, you are the only role that has a responsibility for EVERY mechanic. Every movement mechanic you have to plan around as a caster, each tank buster you are helping out your tank plus the autos they take, and every AoE that goes out is your responsibility(tanks help too but only if one of their two abilities Reprisal and AoE option(or two with PLD) are up). Not to mention the healer role is the only real reactionary role. Sure a tank can toss out one thing here or there, a caster can raise, a DPS can provide a heal or buff; but when it comes down to someone dying, someone taking unnecessary damage, someone collecting vuln stacks, or needing an emergency esuna/heal up, that's all on the healer role for the most part.

Now, I understand fully, I really do, how healing can be an absolute snooze fest in scripted content with competent members, over geared teammates, and under tuned fights. I talk about it with my healers all the time. However, going back to my first point, each job is made with every player in mind, for every piece of content. I personally think SGE should be the standard for healers, having enough DPS options and an(in my mind) engaging toolkit that is fun for both casuals and more veteran players in most content. Though in the same vein(and this is where I will most likely be shot) I do not think it would be healthy for the game and players as a whole to go back to HW levels of DPS busy on healers as it would have a negative impact on the casual side of that role.

Let me be clear, any job is boring if the content is easy. I don't even enjoy doing dungeons or Normal modes on my main(GNB) as much and sometimes prefer doing them on a DPS or Healer that I am not as comfortable with so I am more engaged. I do not find that to be a fault in the design of the jobs or even the dungeons(though I do wish you could pull more than just two mobs pls SE) knowing that dungeons are usually the easiest form of content along with the Normal modes. Now for a first Savage tier, as a tank it was ok. Some parts were fun(I actually like Pinax), and some like the entirety of P1S were Chadarnook levels of boring. But I also know Savage is not the hardest content, that is reserved for the Ultimates. Normal is the easy, Savage is the medium, Ultimate is the hard. I feel that is how I should be tested as a player based off that model and how others should be tested as well. No one should be looking at Normal modes as any sort of basis as they are generally boring for every job regardless, though I can agree that perhaps there should have been more things to heal up specifically in P1N, same with the EX1 and EX2. Now according to Yoshi, they were playing it safer for a first tier like they have since SB, and we SHOULD see an increase in difficulty next raid tier, which remains to be seen.

Healers have the most responsibility and are the most reactionary role. Having(to an extent) a simple rotation is purely for casual healers(like myself) to be able to perform their healing duties and contribute to DPS while not being buried in the necessity to preform a more complex DPS rotation. This is good for the casuals in the casual content. It is completely understandable that it leaves more hardcore players wanting more. However, adding too much more to the healer DPS kit(a little wouldn't hurt, agreed) would be detrimental to the casuals in casual content. Therefore, I am of the opinion that the change should come from the harder content the casuals are not doing, to receive the satisfaction all roles are looking for. Which is where I believe the statement of doing an ultimate is stemming from. From understanding that the jobs need to be made for casuals to do casual content from a business standpoint, and that players should look at the harder content for the fulfillment they desire. Of course there is always room to improve and make adjustments, the devs have always made questionable design choices in the past, I just think a lot of people miss the point being made by Yoshi and the team.