Healers need an overhaul

[Zebraoracle]

To answer both of these posts:

The new savage is pretty engaging, for healers. Lots of heal, lots of mit, lots of mechanic to solve. But Healer pop take a deep.

Face it: "we want it to be more engaging", "we want it to be more cool" are nothing but window dressing excuses for people who want nothing more but to play a green DPS with big fat numbers. In short, the majority of healers complain stem from the group of people who subconsciously don't want to play traditional healers to begin with, period. I enjoy the healing of this tier, but I can tell I'm in the minority. You said Yoshi's comment is so disingenuous it's unreal ... well, I have the same impression on the comments made by community.

But, you are correct in saying Ultimate is more engaging but it's not due to healing. Comparing to this tier savage, healing DSR was a disappointment.


This is by large SE's fault, since 3.0 in the last 6-7 years they have ingrain the players with the mentality of DPS is king and nothing else matter with their raid design. I applaud their attempt to walk back on it now and I think that's the right direction. But I also admit they're trying to move mountain, and wish them luck.

I mean... P5S and P6S were only "engaging" for like, the first few weeks until healers and tanks outscaled the DoTs through gear. Those two raids are no longer remotely threatening and the "scary DoTs", which people were so excited for, can easily be waved away with OGCDs. I took a break from savage for a bit and resumed with my static on P7S, and uh... the party wide and tank DoTs there aren't very threatening either. My co-healer and I both take turns solving the party-wide DoT with a single OGCD each and that's it. That's not really what I call engaging.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those "healers should only heal" healers by any means (hell, when I healed in WoW I was also contributing to damage), I just... want the role I love to be fun, and I take offense at YoshiP implying Ultimates are the supposed solution to that when it's not even remotely the case.

[ASkellington]

Face it: "we want it to be more engaging", "we want it to be more cool" are nothing but window dressing excuses for people who want nothing more but to play a green DPS with big fat numbers. In short, the majority of healers complain stem from the group of people who subconsciously don't want to play traditional healers

This comment right here is why you were being called out as gaslighting. Not the "green dps" comment. You were essentially saying that we don't want more to heal and we just want to DPS.

Uh, no. We do want more to heal, but we also want engaging down time, because we're always going to have down time, because SE is NEVER going to overhaul the game to make it where we heal upwards of 90% of a fight.

I don't get why people cannot understand that. Look at the top part of my quote. Read it. Due to the way FFXIV is designed, we are going to have time spent not healing. That can be 10% of a fight, that can be 70& of a fight.

Why is it such a problem to ask for that down time to be interesting? Please answer that question. Because from where I'm standing from, it isn't a problem.

[Raven2014]

Uh, no. We do want more to heal, but we also want engaging down time, because we're always going to have down time,

Uhm have you been reading all the discussion/argument following that post? The majority of them are asking the healer kit to be strimed down and replacing with DPS abilities, that doesn't sound very "wanting more to heal" to me. And this is hardly the first time I joint this thread, I usually take 2-3 months break between each spark of discussion, but the narrative and content never really change. That's a conclusion I reached from more than just what often brought up in these discussion, but also a very obvious trend and mind set that appears pretty much all aspect of the design.

Like I said, I put the 'cause majority of this mind set on the developers that for the last 6-7 years that have mold the expectation of the players base. Regardless that doesn't change the fact of what it is. You may have noticed one of my reply I had reaffirmed it, if stating what I consider to be the truth is considered gaslighting, then I guess that can't be helped. It is not my intention, but it is a fact. In fact I don't think any one had actually refute the comment specifically, rather just give a bunch of reason why it is that way.

because SE is NEVER going to overhaul the game to make it where we heal upwards of 90% of a fight.

And ... that doesn't sound like my problem? First I don't know why I should change my personal preference over what you guys believe SE is thinking. Secondly ... I looked around and I see people constantly ask for things that SE never delivered ... have that ever stopped you people asking year after year? I don't know why you and yours somehow think I should stop asking what I want ... just because it doesn't conform to your own wish?

Hell, one person a couple page back even mock me as a "boomer" for liking thing that way. Like I said I'm not a boomer, but even if I were one, that doesn't make my preference any less valid than yours.


And you have been given plenty of examples in the last few page (majority did not even come from me) of why even without a focus on healing, there are many many other way to keep healers busy. I simply want to be engaged in a gameplay that identifiable to the role I choose, and not having it conflate with another. I play and enjoy SMN, but I don't want a SMN light when I play a healer. Which if you think about it, that would probably be exactly what healers become after "taking away the bloat healing kits and replace them with a simple DPS rotation".

[Sebazy]

Uhm have you been reading all the discussion/argument following that post? The majority of them are asking the healer kit to be strimed down and replacing with DPS abilities, that doesn't sound very "wanting more to heal" to me.

In fairness, I think you're misunderstanding the point of that suggestion.

It's not so that we have less healing, but rather that it's not so effortless to heal at the last second because we've got multiple layers of instant cast and resource free AoE healing at our disposal. Far too much for the majority of content it must be said.

You could say that it's the rose tinted glasses effect for 2.0. ARR was a different era to heal because we couldn't 'Oops teehee gigglesnort' at the last second and drop some variety of Tetra, Indom or whatever on a short cooldown and at little to no meaningful cost. We had to pay attention in high HPS situations and even pre healing wasn't just acceptable, it was the safest way to handle many encounters and mechanics.

Even really simple bosses like T1 were intensive to heal during prog because we had to carefully balance and pace our healing output. This tier has been a positive step forward for sure, but even then for the most part it means that we're back to having to keep regen up some of the time and actually have to pay attention to the tank's HP bar. It's still pales compared to Coil prog though IMHO. Was this era perfection? No of course not, but the simple act of healing was *VASTLY* more enjoyable overall to me than what we have now for what it's worth.

[Maltothoris]

The problem here is that air eyes everything did hit harder. However, once you get the gear, it’s back to business as usual. This will never change. Much like in how the fights are still scripted and the damage is still scripted. They would have to go through years of encounters to try and make a more healer centric style to the game. Not to mention that the heals themselves are uninteresting themselves as many of them are just x potency heal.

[flowerfairy]

Face it: "we want it to be more engaging", "we want it to be more cool" are nothing but window dressing excuses for people who want nothing more but to play a green DPS with big fat numbers. In short, the majority of healers complain stem from the group of people who subconsciously don't want to play traditional healers to begin with, period. I enjoy the healing of this tier, but I can tell I'm in the minority.

Such a gaslighting argument. "You don't want to play healer if you want interesting filler rotations, you're just a green DPS. You're not a real healer."

You're right, nothing but DPS matters in current raid design. They would have to uproot the entire scripted and predictable mechanics design and go for more sporadic events.

But changing up their raid design now will only affect future boss fights.
Normal trials will still be boring on healers. Dungeons will still be boring on healers. Solo quests will still be boring on healers.

Moreover, DPS will always be the most important factor of killing a boss, no matter how many more healing checks you bring in. You can't change that.
Stop ignoring that downtime exists. Stop ignoring that when we aren't healing, we're spamming 1 button, and it's boring AF.

Tell me, what is a traditional healer? And tell me, has that ever existed in FFXIV ARR? Was there ever a point in time that a healer that did nothing but spam Cure was more useful than a healer that was able to bring both healing and DPS?

[Raven2014]

Such a gaslighting argument. "You don't want to play healer if you want interesting filler rotations, you're just a green DPS. You're not a real healer."

If it walks like a duck, look like a duck and whack like a duck, then it is a duck. You call it gaslighting, I call a spade a spade.

But changing up their raid design now will only affect future boss fights... a healer that was able to bring both healing and DPS?

Did you miss the part I said the fault inherently lie with the developers that pushed and ingrain this style of play to the community for YEARS? You also putting a bunch of random crap that I never said, so who gaslighting who?

Tell me, what is a traditional healer?

Pardon me for playing MMO way before FF14 itself exist. I remember the days when playing as healer I:

- Have to spam heal to keep the raid alive.
- Have to make judgement call between fast or slow heal or else someone end up death.
- Have to manage my MP or I may OOM before the fight is over.
- Have to prep party in advance for incoming damage.
- Have to precast heal in advance to get enough raw out out in time.

While FF14 itself may never have every item on the list, at some point it had a few, and like I said over the year they had tripped away the healing identity to replace with the DPS's one, and here we are.

I also remember the day healers compete each other on healing amount vs overhealing and that's how you rank good vs bad healers. I am sorry you find the term "Green DPS offensive", but in a game where:

- The main metric used to judge healer are their DPS,
- High healing number actually frown upon on
- The healer's supposed main 2nd stat (Piety) is a waste stats no one want,
- Healers are encouraged to stack Direct Hit which has nothing to do with heal

... Healers in FF14 is a GREEN DPS. If saying that is considered gaslighting the community then so be it, I am gaslighting you, because the alternative would require me to lie ... and I hate simply hate lying.

[flowerfairy]

snip

Oh no, I don't find "green DPS" offensive. I understand that's what healers are and have always been. That system you say developers have been pushing for years was already ingrained since 2.0. They purposefully shifted away from slow menu-flicking gameplay in 1.x because they tried to appeal to a larger player base.

What I have doubts about is what a traditional healer is supposed to be. Almost everything in that list is already the trait of a healer in any game. You heal only what's necessary, you need to choose the appropriate heal to avoid the death of someone, you sometimes have shields or defense buffs to apply before damage goes out, and sometimes you precast heals to immediate cover the damage that's about to go out (though not as common since we have an abundance of instantaneous heals.) Overheal is also avoided in this game. The only thing that isn't common now is MP management through avoiding casting spells, because a majority of players don't like sitting on their hands with nothing to do.

Basically, a healer can have tools to do all of that, and have better filler rotations. I don't see why asking for both makes you a fake healer. If healers got half of their oGCD heal bloat chopped off and it was replaced for filler rotations, wouldn't that make healing way more interesting since you don't have a bunch of OP cooldowns that come back really quickly?

[Raven2014]

Oh no, I don't find "green DPS" offensive. I understand that's what healers are and have always been. That system you say developers have been pushing for years was already ingrained since 2.0. They purposefully shifted away from slow menu-flicking gameplay in 1.x because they tried to appeal to a larger player base.

What I have doubts about is what a traditional healer is supposed to be. Almost everything in that list is already the trait of a healer in any game.

If you want to simplified it down to the core ... sure. But in 2.0 DPS and Healing was still a choice. You have cleric, which makes DPS very in-efficient outside of it. You had MP management, meaning going all in on DPS would leave you short of MP for actual healing. And they have tripped away even what little there were since. Remember at the beginning of 6.0 where Lily were a DPS loss? God, heaven forbid you to heal with Lily - which is your supposed free heal - which is the reason why your MP regen is lower than other healers ... community cried about this "bad MP economy" because of a self-created MP crisis over some small potency loss. It's always DPS DPS DPS, if healing means loss DPS than people refuse to heal.

Basically, a healer can have tools to do all of that, and have better filler rotations. I don't see why asking for both makes you a fake healer. If healers got half of their oGCD heal bloat chopped off and it was replaced for filler rotations, wouldn't that make healing way more interesting since you don't have a bunch of OP cooldowns that come back really quickly?

Ok, you wrote that and you still don't see why I said what I said? Like ... you're suggesting remove HEALING ABILITIES and replace them with "interesting DPS options" on Healers ... and me saying people just want to play green DPS considered gaslighting?


Uh ... how about making fight where you actually need to utilize the entire kit and even more? How about oGCD is the extras you need for extra oohm and MP economy instead of your bread and butter. How about something like bleed an permanent ambient damage tick instead of something happens occasionally? (btw 2.0 had that). How about tank buster coming harder and more frequent that are beyond the healer oGCD's capacity? How about the damage output usually seen at the end of the 4th floor be used more consistently throughout entire fight instead of being treated as soft-enrage mechanic?

And before you said that is too hard or they have to redesign the game blah blah blah ... like ... look, I already admitted they're moving mountain if they want to retrain the community's mentality at this point. I'm simply telling you my preference because you asked, I can't lie to myself what I like.

[Shurrikhan]

If you want to simplified it down to the core ... sure. But in 2.0 DPS and Healing was still a choice.

No more or less so than now. You healed as was necessary and avoided overhealing unless there was an upcoming AoE that'd kill anyone not topped off (in which case it was better to go a little over than under). That's... exactly the same as today. The changes are solely:

• A slight reduction in the minimum skill required (as relative healing requirements are far less now than then), but you have more (frequently redundant to point of bloat) healing buttons to manage, and
• A more significant reduction to skill ceiling, as there's less to manage outside of healing / less to optimize in throughput towards long-term requirements).

You have cleric, which makes DPS very in-efficient outside of it.

If you start a cast, you have (if not wasting time and thereby throughput) essentially committed to a GCD of either healing or offense. Cleric Stance merely increased that commitment by a single further GCD.

It was not deep. It did not increase "choice" in healing vs. dps. It was simply a bloated and mostly nonsensical shift lever, as if you had to double-clutch before each time you wanted to turn in the other direction.

You had MP management, meaning going all in on DPS would leave you short of MP for actual healing.

Not really. You simply brought a Bard. Outside of an undergeared and/or underperforming run, there was still virtually no reason to ever use a more MP-efficient option like Cure I / Physick, especially if running a SMN.

And they have tripped away even what little there were since.

...Which had solely to do with relative healing requirement nerfs to placate anxious healers, reductions to the non-healing-related parts of healer kits, and removal of dependencies on other jobs (Ballad, Promoted Bishop, and Manashift). There was no point at which you were more incentivized to GCD heal wastefully. It's never been anything but a bad idea.

Remember at the beginning of 6.0 where Lily were a DPS loss? God, heaven forbid you to heal with Lily - which is your supposed free heal - which is the reason why your MP regen is lower than other healers ... community cried about this "bad MP economy" because of a self-created MP crisis over some small potency loss.

There are three factors for something to actually be "free":

• It must cost no MP/TP.
• It must cost no offensive potency over time to use.
• It must cost no curative potency over time to use.

See an MP cost attached to any of the other healers' sources of "free" healing? As oGCDs, neither do they cost offensive potency, given sufficient weave space (which all have now). And as oGCDs, casting them does not prevent them from being stacked with a GCD heal in the same global's space if necessary (i.e., no curative opportunity cost / not redundant with normal outputs).

Previously, Lily met only one of those 3 factors. Now it meets two. It still falls short in terms of stackable burst healing. The only reason that isn't being likewise pointed out is because there's virtually no use for that anyways because the burst healing requirements were trimmed so short and tuning made up for what combined throughput would have otherwise been lost to Lily casts being GCDs instead of oGCDs.

It's always DPS DPS DPS, if healing means loss DPS than people refuse to heal.

Except a lack of heals that result in a death results in a far greater DPS loss. If not healing at a given moment would not result in a death or more personal dps loss being required later due to having to heal more at that point, then... yeah, you shouldn't be wasting your time healing.

But your entire purpose, including via not letting people die outside of specific exceptions (i.e., when it would cost more resources in MP, time, and CD value, to fight through a debuff than to just rez after), is to speed up the run. Healing is your uniquely fleshed out means to do so, but your purpose in attending the run remains the same as everyone else's: to do the thing (clear the instance, etc.) as quickly and enjoyably as possible (balancing speed against risk as per the time, goals, experience, and patience your team has).

Uh ... how about making fight where you actually need to utilize the entire kit and even more? How about oGCD is the extras you need for extra oohm and MP economy instead of your bread and butter.

Those advocating for more to do during downtime aren't the people you need to convince to allow additions like that. They clearly have more than enough downtime (enough to get bored of how little depth and variety are available within it). They're merely advocating for at least increased skill ceiling.

You'd need to convince the "don't increase the skill floor" crowd, which, yes, predominantly tend to be those asking for (still) little to do regardless and some of the staunchest opponents against adding (back) any sort of non-healing depth despite still seeming to struggle with the skill floor (such that the space between there and the ceiling is pretty irrelevant to them).

How about tank buster coming harder and more frequent that are beyond the healer oGCD's capacity?

It's not either-or, unless you are asking for harder than Ultimate levels of healing requirements in all content. You can both have more than 2 ST buttons for use in downtime and have less downtime.

So long as there is room for less capable players, there is going to be room (yes, optimizable downtime) between floor and ceiling -- which will only expand as gear increases. The downtime, then, is still going to be a significant component of healer gameplay worth addressing even if it were a fifth its present size.

Ok, you wrote that and you still don't see why I said what I said? Like ... you're suggesting remove HEALING ABILITIES and replace them with "interesting DPS options" on Healers ... and me saying people just want to play green DPS considered gaslighting?

You do realize that healing abilities are literally the oGCDs, the bloated count of which make the skill floor higher than it otherwise would be relative to the meager healing requirements in this game (thus expanding the downtime required to placate/allow for less skilled/coachable players)?

If you want less downtime, especially without increasing the skill floor to the point of excluding a portion of players currently accounted for, the most direct solution would be to trade excessive healing oGCDs for additional actions useful for downtime. That's not mutually exclusive with other changes to healing kits, tuning, or context. It's simply a very easy and reasonable first step that could be taken.