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

[Banriikku]

The Dev Team or someone at SE reads this stuff. The last time Yoshida talked about healer and how he was explaiing their plan/vision made it clear they knew about the healers. They have all the information and Feedback but still come to the conclusion "cater to the audience that thinks healing is stressfull".

[ArthurVeritaston]

As a sprout, I think the best thing they can do to address this issue is to reduce tank self healing. I haven't experienced this yet, but I don't think tanks should have self healing, except maybe some weak paladin heals. Tanks should be good at avoiding or mitigating damage and healers should be good at healing. Once that health bar goes down it should be the healer's job to refill.

[SeverianLyonesse]

As a sprout, I think the best thing they can do to address this issue is to reduce tank self healing. I haven't experienced this yet, but I don't think tanks should have self healing, except maybe some weak paladin heals. Tanks should be good at avoiding or mitigating damage and healers should be good at healing. Once that health bar goes down it should be the healer's job to refill.

I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that WAR has self-heals. That makes no sense to me. And Aurora doesn't really make much sense in GNB's job fantasy either.

I would be down for getting rid of all of them, including Clemency, since PLD still has other things that contribute to its "mage tank" role. However, I can see why they exist--to make soloing through MSQ content easier on tank players.

Which...I think that is a pretty significant problem with the game's design when you step back and look at it: that each tank (except DRK) has a self-heal *solely* to survive solo content, but that throws off the balance of practically everything else.

So I think if there is any way to remove this and still allow tank players to progress through MSQ content, it has to be done.

[MellowMink]

The idea that it’s okay to dismiss valid and persistent healer complaints about lacking DPS variety or healing complexity while playing as a healer for 99% of instances and the entirety of solo content by simply pointing to four extremely specific instances as if that’s the only thing that healers ever want to play is actually incredibly disingenuous and rude.

It feels like the director is sometimes looking for an easy out in these questions, and it’s kind of disheartening to see “You think you want it, but you don’t” types of responses from Final Fantasy XIV designers when I thought they wanted to avoid those problems that many players had with toxic World of Warcraft community-versus-designer conflicts.

[SieyaM]

I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that WAR has self-heals. That makes no sense to me. And Aurora doesn't really make much sense in GNB's job fantasy either.

I would be down for getting rid of all of them, including Clemency, since PLD still has other things that contribute to its "mage tank" role. However, I can see why they exist--to make soloing through MSQ content easier on tank players.

Which...I think that is a pretty significant problem with the game's design when you step back and look at it: that each tank (except DRK) has a self-heal *solely* to survive solo content, but that throws off the balance of practically everything else.

So I think if there is any way to remove this and still allow tank players to progress through MSQ content, it has to be done.

Clemency I believe is on PLD because in previous titles the job has had access to low level white magic, such as cure. Instead of just giving them Cure from WHM they decided to make an independent healing spell for PLD in this iteration.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Clemency I believe is on PLD because in previous titles the job has had access to low level white magic, such as cure. Instead of just giving them Cure from WHM they decided to make an independent healing spell for PLD in this iteration.

I understand that there is a tradition of giving Paladins some healing or white magic, not just in FF but in many RPGs.

I think even accounting for that it is a detriment to gameplay and would be best abandoned. Prior to the WAR rebalancing, practically the only time I ever saw Clemency come up in conversation were people saying PLDs just shouldn't use it because it's a DPS loss and an insult to their healers.

[ForteNightshade]

I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that WAR has self-heals. That makes no sense to me. And Aurora doesn't really make much sense in GNB's job fantasy either.

I would be down for getting rid of all of them, including Clemency, since PLD still has other things that contribute to its "mage tank" role. However, I can see why they exist--to make soloing through MSQ content easier on tank players.

Which...I think that is a pretty significant problem with the game's design when you step back and look at it: that each tank (except DRK) has a self-heal *solely* to survive solo content, but that throws off the balance of practically everything else.

So I think if there is any way to remove this and still allow tank players to progress through MSQ content, it has to be done.

The tanks having self-sustain has very little, if anything, to do with solo-ing MSQ content. Every single tank could still accomplish that without ever touching their self heals. They're only needed when you're meme-ing old EX or Savage fights.

They're added to give tanks flavor and survivability in harder content so they aren't solely reliant on a healer. Otherwise, they'd be even further reduced to DPS that occasionally press a CD. Furthermore, tanks having self-sustain isn't really the problem here. A Warrior could literally never touch any one of their self heals and at one healer would be even remotely stressed about it. After all, there's a reason Dark Knight is meta despite it's complete lack of healing. There's so little healing required it just doesn't matter. So the tank with none but deals the highest damage wins.

[SeverianLyonesse]

The tanks having self-sustain has very little, if anything, to do with solo-ing MSQ content. Every single tank could still accomplish that without ever touching their self heals. They're only needed when you're meme-ing old EX or Savage fights.

They're added to give tanks flavor and survivability in harder content so they aren't solely reliant on a healer. Otherwise, they'd be even further reduced to DPS that occasionally press a CD. Furthermore, tanks having self-sustain isn't really the problem here. A Warrior could literally never touch any one of their self heals and at one healer would be even remotely stressed about it. After all, there's a reason Dark Knight is meta despite it's complete lack of healing. There's so little healing required it just doesn't matter. So the tank with none but deals the highest damage wins.

I would agree with your elaboration, with the exception of "further reduced to DPS" because they still have a suite of mitigation abilities and also care the most about positioning. Also, XIV is already a DPS-driven game--all of the jobs are already "reduced to DPS." The problem is that tanks get DPS mini-games while healers get single-button DPS spam.

I also think the "flavor" is quite irrelevant, since there are many different ways to give a tank flavor than self-sustaining through self-heals. If they in fact do need more to do outside of DPS, perhaps the raid design should focus more on forcing them to single-target DPS- or healer-busters. But I think healing themselves--on top of being, as you observe, mostly unneeded--is treading too much on the already quite narrow role of healers.

And blah blah I've already talked at length in this thread about how the self-sustain is really just the devs' way of making the game relatively fail-proof because XIV cares more about reeling in new casual players than challenging their skill. But I still think Arthur hit on perhaps the one thing that is the biggest culprit for healer irrelevancy.

[Deceptus]

They're only needed when you're meme-ing old EX or Savage fights.

This is just blatantly untrue. Both current EX's have been completed without healers due mostly to tank self healing.

P1N and P2N have been solod by WAR/PLD/GNB due to their self healing.

P1S and P2S have been done by an all warrior team. Why do you think that is even possible?

[Ixon]

I would agree with your elaboration, with the exception of "further reduced to DPS" because they still have a suite of mitigation abilities and also care the most about positioning. Also, XIV is already a DPS-driven game--all of the jobs are already "reduced to DPS." The problem is that tanks get DPS mini-games while healers get single-button DPS spam.

I also think the "flavor" is quite irrelevant, since there are many different ways to give a tank flavor than self-sustaining through self-heals. If they in fact do need more to do outside of DPS, perhaps the raid design should focus more on forcing them to single-target DPS- or healer-busters. But I think healing themselves--on top of being, as you observe, mostly unneeded--is treading too much on the already quite narrow role of healers.

And blah blah I've already talked at length in this thread about how the self-sustain is really just the devs' way of making the game relatively fail-proof because XIV cares more about reeling in new casual players than challenging their skill. But I still think Arthur hit on perhaps the one thing that is the biggest culprit for healer irrelevancy.

As I have stated previously, the issue is two-part: Tanks and Healers built up power-creep due to the necessity of wanting them to "feel" stronger with each expansion, and the scaled down difficulty of overall content as they wanted to appeal to as many of the incoming player base as possible. These changes are great for the casual and newer players in simple content like Normal Modes and Dungeons, but hurts the fun and engagement of it's more veteran/hardcore players even in it's Savage tiers. The trick now is how do you make jobs fundamentally more of a challenge and more engaging to veteran players without taxing the skill floor and without making more casual/newer players a complete hindrance in a majority of content. As a tank, it does feel nice to have such a powerful kit that I can carry any party in 4 to 8 man content with, but in the same vein, it feels wasted and boring in current Savage content. This is doubly so with healers having a lackluster DPS rotation to fill in the gaps.

I am still of the mind that they should scrap or combine 1/3rd of healers healing kits, replace them with engaging DPS options, while scaling down tank sustainability and increasing DPS checks in some fights to help bring back the feeling of the trinity, thus allowing tanks and especially healers to feel more like the roles they are supposed to be. However, I do not think any changes to that degree will happen till after the next Ultimate, as I believe Yoshi and the devs are worried they might break something within the jobs and the next Ultimate that was already put on hold for so long.