Healers need an overhaul

[Semirhage]

They don't find spamming Glare fun they find getting yelled at for messing even less fun.

Between spamming glare and lower chance of messing up and getting yelled at and having a more engaging rotation but higher risk of failure and getting called out by an angry player they go for the boring but safer option.

Don't care, not my problem, get therapy if a strangers' opinion reduces one to a quivering mess, go ahead and spam Glare if the rest of the rotation is too haaaaaaaaard, actually work at improving instead of demanding that the finish line be moved to right under your feet, don't lobotomize a job and whole role because the response one's own lack of skill should be improvement, not deleting the competition?

There are several solutions to this that aren't "whole role must be boring". Many of them involve self-reflection and self-improvement, which I prefer over "no, it's the people who are actually good at this role who are wrong!"

[Hezhi]

That's the problem, that type of game play has never existed for a healer ever since the games inception unless NO one is ever taking damage or getting hit which from what I've seen is never the case.

What..? What game are you playing friend? Everywhere in this game, from simple dungeons to Ultimate difficulty content, you have phases where damage dealt to your team can be healed with a single ogcd ability, or phases where your team takes very little damage and/or no healing is required.

Your ideas are basically, "Let their just be DPSers and the tank, and one of the DPSer can occasionally heal the group."

That is not my idea. If you believe healers aren't meant to spend a significant amount of time DPSing you are severely misguided. The way Savage and ultimate encounters were designed attest to that, with damage thresholds accounting for Healers damage contribution. It has been like this for several expansions now.
Being a green DPS that keeps the group alive with the least amount of time and resources possible has literally been what healers have been doing since Stormblood. My statics healers crack jokes about hardcasting healing spells because you're not supposed to heal with these, but mostly with OGCDs between your [aero + glare] casts. That is what playing a healer optimally means in FFXIV.

And if you don't wanna play optimally, that is fine. You can do poor damage as a healer and still clear ANYTHING that isn't an ultimate raid (and even there, depending on which...). If they do end up bringing more DPS tools to some healers, you'll be welcome to ignore them then as you do now, and if you're someone who doesn't care about pushing DPS as a healer, you'll lose nothing. Nothing. None will come at you for not refreshing your DoTs, the same way none will come at you now for forgetting to DPS in a dungeon as a healer, because none gives a qiqirns arse about how much damage you do unless you're actively holding the group back in higher floors of Savage content.
So please don't come and bring down people who don't want to AFK between their Assize casts!

[Payotz]

Between spamming glare and lower chance of messing up and getting yelled at and having a more engaging rotation but higher risk of failure and getting called out by an angry player they go for the boring but safer option.

That's not even a proper argument to begin with. You are still going to have that safe Glare - DoT option even with extra dps buttons.

It's up to the healer if they want to break out of their shell and actually try to improve, but limiting the healers that want to break out of this shell to please the healers who don't is not a good design decision for jobs.

What good reason is there to NOT HAVE a skill ceiling?

Why should the healers who are "scared of messing up that they don't glare and spam only Medica 2 on cooldown throughout the instance" care if there's going to be room for healers who WANT to improve?

Extra dps buttons are OPTIONAL for healers who WANT to improve. That's it. Why deny them that choice?

Extra dps buttons are never going to sabotage your ability to heal, only give you the ability to make use of the downtime after the heal.

If there's no downtime, then heal. Top everyone up if you need to.
But if there's no damage going out because we all know half the AoEs in this game are oneshots and can't be healed anyway, then rez and dps, or stand still, whatever floats your boat.

Give the healers who want to make use of that downtime, more tools to do so. Give them optional dps buttons.

And also:

The design philosophy of making the gap between the skill floor and the skill ceiling barely visible so people won't feel bad when they're not good is not good.

What they're actively doing with this job design, with every role, is to effectively make it so that a new player can pick up a job, and feel like they're making optimal use of the job after barely any time investment.
("OH LITTLE TIMMY YES YOU NOW ARE A MASTER AT THIS JOB WITHIN TEN MINUTES OF HITTING THE STRIKING DUMMY!")

THAT IS A BORING WAY TO DESIGN JOBS. FUN SHOULD BE MORE OF A FACTOR IN THE DESIGN PROCESS RATHER THAN GUTTING DOWN JOBS TO GIVE PEOPLE A FAKE FEELING OF ACCOMPLISHMENT THAT THEY DONT EVEN CARE FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Adding more complexity on top of the base jobs, the base rotations, is not gonna matter for people who don't care about them. Just like how people still spam Cure 1, when Lily GCDs and Cure 2 exist.

It's not gonna lower the skill floor, cause you can still function in content designed for casuals. More dps buttons ain't gonna mean there needs to be dps checks in Casual Content. Casual content will be as clearable with a healer who 1111111 2 1111111 or actually utilizes all their dps buttons. It doesn't matter if the skill ceiling gap is wide, because the skill floor is still low. The jobs are still accessible.

Where it does matter is in Savage and Ultimate, and frankly those are the people who WANT to be better, who wants to feel like they're improving.
Who wants to feel like they're progressively inching towards a high skill ceiling.
Who WANTS a skill ceiling.
And frankly, that's what's missing from the job design ever since 5.0 .

Bring back the skill ceiling. Make being better at X job FEEL BETTER . Stop trying to forcibly remove the skill ceiling to cater to people who are perfectly content to stay at the skill floor.
People aren't asking to raise the skill floor. People are asking to raise the skill ceiling instead.

[Kolsykol]

Would you guys be okay with more complex rotations but the same DPS?
Or even lower DPS?

Just asking out of curiosity.
Personally I'd be okay with either.

If they actually end up doing something tho and the damage goes up...
Holy hell dear lawd gooby plz rebalance the content and up the HP numbers ( and the damage dished out ).
So many MSQ trials in particular already die before they get going.

[Payotz]

Would you guys be okay with more complex rotations but the same DPS?
Or even lower DPS?

I'd personally be okay with it. I just want more buttons to press during downtime.
I'm also down for a nerf of healing output as well but that's never going to happen.

[pikalovr]

Would you guys be okay with more complex rotations but the same DPS?
Or even lower DPS?

Just asking out of curiosity.
Personally I'd be okay with either.

If they actually end up doing something tho and the damage goes up...
Holy hell dear lawd gooby plz rebalance the content and up the HP numbers ( and the damage dished out ).
So many MSQ trials in particular already die before they get going.

i wouldn't expect a huge damage increase like others seem to assume is what will happen but if you perform your kit perfectly you do deserve to deal higher damage than you can now for more effort. liek at absolute peak performance maybe a 200-300DPS increase but mediocre play would prolly only see around a 50DPS increase on average. so it'd require rebalancing numbers across the board but it's worth it as you have a baseline you can expand on later on like with stone going up to glare 3 for example

[IDontPetLalas]

Would you guys be okay with more complex rotations but the same DPS?
Or even lower DPS?

Just asking out of curiosity.
Personally I'd be okay with either.

If they actually end up doing something tho and the damage goes up...
Holy hell dear lawd gooby plz rebalance the content and up the HP numbers ( and the damage dished out ).
So many MSQ trials in particular already die before they get going.

No, I would not be OK with lower DPS. How do you think that would affect solo duties or any OW content? I would want it to go up a bit, however I doubt that it will.

Regarding your comments concerning trials and MSQ? That's not on healers. That's the dungeon design, the illevl design, and other factors. if you're concerned about old content? So what, they've had to rebalance before. They will likely rebalance again for other issues.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Would you guys be okay with more complex rotations but the same DPS?
Or even lower DPS?

Depends how it’s done. The former would be the most ideal for me. I can work on getting better. People who don’t wish to work on becoming better can still stick with their 1 button spam.

Meanwhile the latter… Lower DPS with more complex button is a marginally better option imho vs what we have now when it comes to endgame gameplay, BUT I would rather not to because MSQ, solo stuffs, and NG+ exist.

You can try take up AST and play MSQ/Endwalker NG+ solo. It is extremely horrible: (1) Cards don’t do anything special; (2) You have the least personal damage output amongst all job; (3) Encounters lasts longer which also exacerbated by point 2, prolonging the 1 button spams; and (4) Healing aspect is even more dull because these solo duties are designed to ensure all 3 roles can have enough effective health pool and sustenance to survive. Nothing like 1 Essential Dignity can’t fix and go back to 1 button spam—it’s a slog.

If they could design a unique encounters made specifically for healers? Yeah sure, but that’s completely up to them, and honestly? I don’t trust them enough at this point. Not when the only (but not limited to) memorable healer’s exclusive duty in the back of my memory was only the SCH’s job quest where you had to cleanse certain debuff or you’ll fail. Even that one, was still heavily leaning toward 1 button spam in my first playthrough. Urianger’s RP quest came to mind as well but that’s not healer’s exclusive.

[Nizzi]

Would you guys be okay with more complex rotations but the same DPS?
Or even lower DPS?

Just asking out of curiosity.
Personally I'd be okay with either.

Yes, I'd be okay with it. I'd even be okay if the more complex buttons were only minor DPS gains over just ignoring them, such as a theoretical Miasma back on SCH only being like 15-50 potency above a Broil cast if you managed its full duration properly. I seriously wouldn't mind that someone who wants to ignore it can and still do around the same DPS as me, we already have this on SCH too with Energy Drain optimization not contributing more than like 5% total DPS gain vs someone who ignores Energy Drain entirely and still spams the same amount of Broil casts.

[IDontPetLalas]

Depends how it’s done. The former would be the most ideal for me. I can work on getting better. People who don’t wish to work on becoming better can still stick with their 1 button spam.

Meanwhile the latter… Lower DPS with more complex button is a marginally better option imho vs what we have now when it comes to endgame gameplay, BUT I would rather not to because MSQ, solo stuffs, and NG+ exist.

You can try take up AST and play MSQ/Endwalker NG+ solo. It is extremely horrible: (1) Cards don’t do anything special; (2) You have the least personal damage output amongst all job; (3) Encounters lasts longer which also exacerbated by point 2, prolonging the 1 button spams; and (4) Healing aspect is even more dull because these solo duties are designed to ensure all 3 roles can have enough effective health pool and sustenance to survive. Nothing like 1 Essential Dignity can’t fix and go back to 1 button spam—it’s a slog.

If they could design a unique encounters made specifically for healers? Yeah sure, but that’s completely up to them, and honestly? I don’t trust them enough at this point. Not when the only (but not limited to) memorable healer’s exclusive duty in the back of my memory was only the SCH’s job quest where you had to cleanse certain debuff or you’ll fail. Even that one, was still heavily leaning toward 1 button spam in my first playthrough. Urianger’s RP quest came to mind as well but that’s not healer’s exclusive.

Doing solo anything as an AST even as a level 90 feels horrid, it feels like you're hitting thinks with a Nerf bat (or globe). I realize some people will likely suggest switching to another job, yes I have multiple jobs to pick from - however that isn't true for everyone- and also i think that while each job should be distinct, it shouldn't be a slog like you say on any job.