Healers need an overhaul

[Raven2014]

I'm actually mostly fine with both those changes / reductions, unless they'd be willing to actually make something interesting out of them.

...

Esuna, as it's currently implemented, is more one-note than any other way of addressing a given debuff, so I'm honestly glad it's rarely used in its current form. Heal check? Nah, just use that special button that's otherwise wasted bloat.

And ... that's exactly why I'm taking the stance that I'm making. Your first sentence ... if you present that as the choice to SE: either make it more interesting, or remove it then throughout the last 7 years they had left little room for doubt which option SE will pick. And that's exactly why we arrive at the barebone state that we are currently.

- Fix an jaggy ability to make it work smooth or remove it: SE will remove it.
- Have something interesting but still raw, should it be refined or remove: it will be remove.
- Have an ability that does something, should content be designed to make use of it or just sideline it: it will be sidelined.

AND, there is very clear pattern to how these decisions are made: to make it easy and easier to DPS. Being MP management, Aggro management or whatsoever, if it gets in the way of easing DPS, it'll get the axe. At this point, regardless of which role you play, it's very obvious DPS is the holy grail for SE.


And where it will actually stop?

This I also don't get. Never has removing tools from most, in the long run, made the few who still get to hold onto their forms of those tools feel any more complex, nuanced, or fun due to their removal elsewhere.

That's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is to concentrate the abilities into classes that make them more identifiable with its role, for example:

- Why all DPS should be selfish DPS, party buff should be removed from every role and give it to support only. The current mess of buff window, meta comp is because this split between selfish classes and utility classes. The game already have a soft enforcement to encourage party to bring every roles, so this would help the balance issues between different comp. That may also help plucking MCH out of the eternal hole it has been stuck in since inception because it never really have a clear identity.

- Why only healers should be in charge of party wide mitigation: yes, they should be remove from DPS and tanks, but that doesn't mean the fight have to adjust down. In stead of melee feint here, caster addle there, tank reprisal later, put all of that on a Regen healer. Instead of Shake here, Samba there, Magic Barrier somewhere else, put all of that on the shield healer. For once, like I said this will help reinforce the role identity. For two, I believe it would open more door for "healer exclusive" mechanic. Why play a healer and dream for a DPS rotation, what about a healing rotation? Right now healing rotation simply amount to mapping your oGCD into a fixed time line of a fight. What about combo action? For example, if I use ability A follow by ability B, it will proc an ability C that will give me a bigger shield for the next big hit? Or if I cast the heals in this sequence, it will give me a powerful regen bundle with a mit so I don't have to cast each of the separately the next time I need it?

[Semirhage]

I think that’s what they’ve been intentionally ignoring. More downtime buttons does not mean less healing. I never said that I didn’t want more heal-intensive mechanics, but what I did say is that only adding that to future fights won’t fix the fundamental issue healers face in every crevice of the game, not just endgame.

The point is that we have a bunch of oGCDs that are extremely powerful AoE heals and they all come off cooldown really fast. This is actually more DPS centric then what I’m asking for. I want there to be meaningful choices between either doing damage or healing the party. That’s what well-designed healers and supports do across any genre of video games.

I want the healing tools we have to be more significant than a bunch of generic X potency heals. This doesn’t make me any less of a healer… It’s gaslighting, plain and simple. It’s invalidating what I want as a healer player, even more so than you keep claiming that we’re doing to your ideas (which we aren’t, we’re telling you we asked for it before and SE refused.)

I can tell someone isn't worth having a discussion with when they open with this "you aren't a REAL HEALER unlike meeeeeeeeeee" bunkum. It's bog-standard Sylphie smug posturing, not a discussion opener. It also perfectly illustrates that said Sylphie doesn't actually understand how skilled healers play but is proudly declaring that they do. There's no "discussion" there. It's just a Sylphie farting out "HeALeRs ShOULd HeAL OnLy" and sticking their nose in the air, which is all they ever do.

[Shurrikhan]

And ... that's exactly why I'm taking the stance that I'm making. Your first sentence...

My first sentence was very much entwined with the last that you so handily cropped:

Because it at least has that, though, I'd rather see Esuna expanded in its functionality (just not on what it can be used for without actually changing how it can be used).

It's not just a matter of "make it more interesting, or remove it."

It's a matter of "When would such a tool have a positive effect on gameplay? How can the tool or its context be adjusted for more interesting gameplay?"

[Payadopa]

Frankly, my problem is not really about healing itself, but more about role indentity. Right now there are so much conflation between roles that it both make it a balancing nightmare and a messy ball of unclear purpose. The Green DPS issue is merely the poster child of the issue, but hardly the only issue. My solution, in full, is actually very radical:

- Take away all party wide buff from DPS. Make them all selfish DPS. They're in charge of their own optimization and no one else. Also, remove stuff like fient and addle.

- Tank should only be in charge of personal defensive cool down, and maybe debuff the boss. They should not be double up duty to party wide mitigation.

- Support classes (p.range) should have the exclusive job as buffing the party, they should be the only one with party wide buffs.

- Remove majority if not all but the most basic self healing (i.e second wind) from all classes.

- Healers should be exclusive in charge of healing and raid wide mitigation.


I feel this way you can amp up the complexity and difficulty for each "role" that is unique to them. Instead of this melting pots "everyone does everything just some better than the others with DPS the only true go to".

While I agree with healing should be changed one way or another, I really hate that idea. lol We need more interaction between jobs. It's what MMOs are about. Main character syndrome should stay in single player games.

[Raven2014]

It's not just a matter of "make it more interesting, or remove it."

Maybe not to you, but it is to SE, as their track record had proven.

It's a matter of "When would such a tool have a positive effect on gameplay? How can the tool or its context be adjusted for more interesting gameplay?"

And there have been plenty example cited by me and others of how, you even had given one yourself. The point here when you ask SE "This or making DPS easier", it's fairly certain they will always gonna pick the latter. Again, they have a 7 years record as proof for that. That's why the mindset of "we ain't gonna get more interesting heal anyway so may as well ask for more DPS" that exhibit by the majority here is something I will never agree with.

I'll be honest, between the MORE HEALING PLEASE and MORE DPS PLEASE, it's a battle I'm full aware I will most certainly lose, but I had picked the side and will stand by it.

While I agree with healing should be changed one way or another, I really hate that idea. lol We need more interaction between jobs. It's what MMOs are about. Main character syndrome should stay in single player games.

Healer don't heal just themselves. Tank keep the boss so it doesn't randomly one shot anyone else. DPS need to know their rotation or everyone gonna die to enrage .etc. so I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "job interaction"? I'm not even sure what main character syndrome even have anything to do with it. If I have to guess, you mean ... one role is more important or central than others? That's absolutely not the case.

[Shurrikhan]

That's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is to concentrate the abilities into classes that make them more identifiable with its role, for example:

- Why all DPS should be selfish DPS, party buff should be removed from every role and give it to support only. The current mess of buff window, meta comp is because this split between selfish classes and utility classes. The game already have a soft enforcement to encourage party to bring every roles, so this would help the balance issues between different comp. That may also help plucking MCH out of the eternal hole it has been stuck in since inception because it never really have a clear identity.

There ultimately is no real difference between "selfish" and "utility" outside of single-target buff pairings (DNC -> BLM/SAM); it all just comes down to rDPS. And that hasn't been a detriment to their identity.

Nor has MCH's (lack of) identity had anything to do with its relative (lack of) utility. Nor has it been stuck in a hole since inception; any holes into which it has sunk were dug over time.

Why only healers should be in charge of party wide mitigation: yes, they should be removed from DPS and tanks, but that doesn't mean the fight have to adjust down. Instead of melee feint here, caster addle there, tank reprisal later, put all of that on a Regen healer. Instead of Shake here, Samba there, Magic Barrier somewhere else, put all of that on the shield healer. For once, like I said this will help reinforce the role identity. For two, I believe it would open more door for "healer exclusive" mechanic. Why play a healer and dream for a DPS rotation, what about a healing rotation?

Then that's exactly what I depicted (simply reducing the amount of gameplay available to each role by removing from them anything you arbitrarily decide isn't fully warranted by their "role identity," to the detriment of the game's available complexity and points of engagement), and I want nothing to do with it.

Slap whatever additional points of enjoyable complexity you like onto Healers as well, but none of them require that you sap mechanics from Tanks or DPS any more than the existence of DPS would somehow warrant that up to 93% of healer GCDs should be spent on a single button.

I'll be honest, between the MORE HEALING PLEASE and MORE DPS PLEASE, it's a battle I'm full aware I will most certainly lose, but I had picked the side and will stand by it.

That's not just a battle lost to you. That's a battle unique to you.

You're about the only one insisting that the two must be mutually exclusive.

Or, all the more extreme, that any such ultimatum should just be taken in stride if the devs were to insist upon it.
To almost no one else would a lesser loss of two nonetheless vital components seem worth accepting. Yes, there is a fair bit of talk as to which would be missed more, and which can be more immediately and easily improved upon, but that's it. Few, if anyone, are claiming that they'd be happy if the game only allowed for healing off of 2-4 oGCDs upon swapping all of the healers' curative and damaging keys; the claim is simply that it'd be less contradictory to their GCD budget and may be somehow more fitting than the present situation, not that it'd be good/satisfying/acceptable.

[Raven2014]

Then that's exactly what I depicted (simply reducing the amount of gameplay available to each role by removing from them anything you arbitrarily decide isn't fully warranted by their "role identity," to the detriment of the game's available complexity and points of engagement), and I want nothing to do with it.

No, rather it's completely opposite. You keep insisting what I suggest will result a "reduction" of game play while that's not necessary the case. It's a matter of quantity vs quality, or at least, a matter of width or depth. The current model insist everyone do a bit of everything, but also it means most of them are shallow. I propose a specialize model role that will allow more depth. Like ... does melee hitting feint, or a caster hitting addle once a blue moon (and also forget half of the time in PF) constitute meaningful and interesting gameplay? So now all tank can hit one button and give a party wide mitigation, but at the same time no longer have to worry about aggro management which is something that are much more identifiable to a tank.

How does that different than Esuna yet you seem to have no problem with that ability being on the side line? How about instead of giving them one single button that's the most difficult part is "please remember to press it in time", let them focus on things that are MORE relevant to their role like ... idk, melee managing their TP (which was removed), or managing their MP (which has been neft to the point of irrelevant)?

If this is your idea of "complexity", I'm not sure I want to know what your idea of simplicity gonna look like.

And no, role identity, and what relevant is something is already well established over 20-30 of gaming history. Just because you want to frame it as my own "albitrary" decision doesn't make it so. Unless you want to argue "aggro management" isn't naturally part of a tank job? Funny, healers currently can already do something like 50% DPS of an actual DPS, and only like 800-1500 behind a tank on average, that's an INSANE level of output ... yet isn't this whole argument started because it's too "boring".


Granted, I may be presenting my idea from the best angle but at the very least, it comes from actual existing examples. You and others however, decided to twist and bent it into the worst interpretation possible.

That's not just a battle lost to you. That's a battle unique to you.

Then you have not read what other had posted, neither you had play many other games. The pattern here it seems people on that side of argument seem to use the "healer heal is boring" to dimiss any alternative suggestion when others had provided plenty of idea, example, and even proof that healers can do a lot of things that relevance to their "job" beside just spamming heal, yet you and yours keep insisting on dismissing that idea despite the fact that FF14 is on the minority side when it comes to this particular issue.

And I say "minority" just to cover all base, I do play a lot if not majority of relevance MMO ever release at one point or another, I don't want to make a claim out of ignorance because there maybe a game that I had missed. But personally, I have never seen a game based on the Trinity that has such a shallow conflation between the 3 roles. If anyone know of an MMO that you believe implement the trinity in a similar fashion, drop the name and I'll be happy to check it out.

[Dzonathan]

Oh, I didn't forget it. I just wanted to touch on the crux of the issue with FFXIV healing, which is the lack of meaningful choices.

Here's the issue with meaningful choices: The more meaningful it is, the less of a choice it is.
If one choice is better solution to a given problem then it's not a choice.
You can cut the steak with a side of your fork but if you have a knife available then you're not making a meaningful choice, you're being stubborn.

[MagiusNecros]

You can cut the steak with a side of your fork but if you have a knife available then you're not making a meaningful choice, you're being stubborn.

Yeah sure but healer job design is a bland dry steak(more like a slice of moldy bread caked in ranch dressing imo) with no seasoning and not worth eating outside of when you are dying of hunger.

Or even better you have a steak but Healers are only given a dirty fork that hasn't been cleaned in months to eat a steak whereas Tanks and DPS are given forks and knives routinely cleaned with every steak.

Pretty garbage analogy.

I think given 2 or 3 meaningful choice on what to spend something on in a jobs kit could be impactful. But the devs aren't interested in impactful choices.

Where having a balanced diet of an apple, a carrot and a chicken sandwich would be great. Current job design only offers fatty fast food.

Min-maxers kill the joy out of every job with the nuance of if it's meaningful it's the only option so no choice allowed.

[Shurrikhan]

It's a matter of quantity vs quality, or at least, a matter of width or depth. The current model insist everyone do a bit of everything, but also it means most of them are shallow.

Again, those two multipliers --breadth and depth of gameplay-- are only mutually exclusive if there is a fixed product. There isn't. There is no cohesive trend to this game's changes to kit or role breadth, depth, nor overall complexity outside of short-term placation of feedback actively half-ignored or misconstrued.

I propose a specialize model role that will allow more depth. Like ... does melee hitting feint, or a caster hitting addle once a blue moon (and also forget half of the time in PF) constitute meaningful and interesting gameplay?

In the case of that cherrypicked (relative to your earlier suggestions for the butcher's block) example, perhaps not. But removing it does not give you any more or less depth anywhere else (outside of, perhaps, decreases to maximal tuning as previously permitted by having fall-back skills that you just removed).

So now all tank can hit one button and give a party wide mitigation, but at the same time no longer have to worry about aggro management which is something that are much more identifiable to a tank.

I don't even know what you're trying to say here. Tanks already each have at least one raidwide eHP buff. And they are not degraded by the inclusion of Feint/Addle. The latter two simply mean that the raid doesn't live or die by a single messed up tank raid-miti cast, which means that, even while keeping the same relative difficulty/leniency, things can be tuned a little higher.

How does that different than Esuna yet you seem to have no problem with that ability being on the side line?

Because Esuna takes a mechanic that could have been dealt with by diverse means with varying, if subtle, nuances, and replaces it with a simple "cancels mechanic" button. It's only interesting when the timing of the cleanse is what forms the mechanic. In all other cases it actively makes things duller. Note: If there were a near-spammable Surecast, I'd hate that, too, for the same reason; it's axed the nuances of stutter-stepping, banking instant-casts (less frequently a thing today, but still there), etc., with just "press this."

How about instead of giving them one single button that's the most difficult part is "please remember to press it in time", let them focus on things that are MORE relevant to their role like ... idk, melee managing their TP (which was removed), or managing their MP (which has been neft to the point of irrelevant)?

Neither TP management or MP management ever existed in any sense beyond "You're basically not allowed to stack more SkS than the minimum rotational breakpoint tier without a NIN, in which case you still can only take one tier faster (and only if you don't have a Paladin, or pre-3.1 DRK)," and "Bring a second Bard; they're overtuned anyways."

And they're incredibly button-costly mechanics to support -- especially without a more flexible GCD and (though this should happen anyways) the removal of animation-ICD resets upon server confirmation of player actions -- for... very little value in terms of player satisfaction.

No, really, let's play out your "TP management" idea. That essentially requires that you have a way of playing that is more D/T/R (damage/time/resource) efficient and another that is more D/T efficient. But that still leaves you a gameplay loop of simply swapping in more D/T/R-efficient combos outside of CDs as (expected) fight length increases; that's it. And it's incompatible, even then, with any other mechanic that'd influence timing, such as non-stackable (de)buff durations or shorter synergetic CDs that you'd want to sync to a particular flow of actions rather than just tossing them into either/any combo.

And no, role identity, and what relevant is something is already well established over 20-30 of gaming history. Just because you want to frame it as my own "albitrary" decision doesn't make it so.

I've never said role identity wasn't a thing. You're strawmanning again.

I said simply that pruning the actual considerations behind tanking, healing, damage-dealing from all but their most obvious role never adds depth to those actions. On the contrary, it simply makes them far more automatic and, typically, mindless.

Remove any means or reason for a damage-dealer to take aggro and thereby kite or a healer to AoE burst heal and gather into a trap and soon enough, you've removed most anything worth kiting or trapping because you've mistaken tanking for something that tanks are instead something tanks do.

Unless you want to argue "aggro management" isn't naturally part of a tank job? Funny, healers currently can already do something like 50% DPS of an actual DPS, and only like 800-1500 behind a tank on average, that's an INSANE level of output ... yet isn't this whole argument started because it's too "boring".

Those two things (gameplay and external balance) have... almost nothing at all to do with each other. /smh

But, okay, let's address them. Having top aggro is synergetic fit to taking the least damage while being able to operate in a position that does not hurt party damage (or, say, healing, if the encounter ends from having healed X to full, etc.) output by more than it significantly eases the resource costs of party intake. You want to take little damage while not having to kite so chaotically that the party loses damage while chasing the mobs chasing you. From that, yes, the "tank" is born.

However, that does not mean, as per your suggestion, that tanks should then be only ones with any tools by which to tank (verb). Doing that means that you no longer having tanking so much as simply tanks who simply have to intercept adds once before proceeding thereafter to act like Damage-Dealers with a few repurposed buttons.

Only when there are meaningful decisions surrounding tanking, including when, where, how, and sometimes even who (sometimes it's not worth the cost of moving the tank and/or a mobile ranged serves just fine or there's something on the tank that requires a sturdy melee to step in) or why (a different reason for generating Enmity than just making sure you're the target) can a game milk tanking for all its depth. And that does not happen when people start trimming it down and hoarding what little remains for the sanctity of "role identity".

Healing is primarily a matter of fitting actions that meet/recuperate the costs of other actions (in terms of HP, in XIV's case, but other resources too in broader views of Support) into periods into which they have least cost, usually by gauging the relative costs of delay that recuperation (given knowledge or educated guesses of what further costs are to come) against the relative costs of delaying some competing long-term-output actions (in terms of CD sync, window optimization, the need to finish something off as quickly as possible to reduce the rate of those costs, combos, and other synergies). Yes, it therefore makes sense to have the person who's most able to evaluate those costs have less to worry about in their rotations and more ways to fill the gaps responsively, preemptively, and/or with more granular control.

However, it does not mean, as per your suggestions, that healers should be the only one with tools with which to address those costs. On the contrary, it tends to leave all others blind to their economy of resources and, thereby, the opportunity costs they incur with their actions, while also giving less depth to what it means to be a healer (for which, in other MMOs, tracking party defensive CDs is a very real part). Similarly, it does not mean that healers must have zero depth to their own contributions to long-term output (only ever damage in XIV, as we really don't like to design fight objectives in more than a single manner); such would deny them a very real way of interfacing with the complexity of healing (and one that affects skill ceiling, anyways -- not the skill floor).

Granted, I may be presenting my idea from the best angle but at the very least, it comes from actual existing examples.

Like which? I've yet to see you present one that actually did what you've been asking for.

Then you have not read what other had posted, neither you had play many other games. The pattern here it seems people on that side of argument seem to use the "healer heal is boring" to dimiss any alternative suggestion when others had provided plenty of idea, example, and even proof that healers can do a lot of things that relevance to their "job" beside just spamming heal, yet you and yours keep insisting on dismissing that idea despite the fact that FF14 is on the minority side when it comes to this particular issue.

At this point, you'll need to define what you even think this "you and yours" is, because it doesn't seem likely to be a camp existent outside your head.

See how there are lot of suggestions aimed at increasing the depth/complexity of healing?

See how some get support and others don't?

It's not because only a random group were attacked or dismissed by a forum cabal. They were simply bad ideas, largely because they wouldn't increase the depth/complexity of healing (i.e., no upsides) despite, say, likely increasing exclusion at a greater rate than they'd increase actual complexity (i.e., raising the required skill floor far more than the skill ceiling, thus reducing the space between for healers to enter and grown, which would be a downside).

But personally, I have never seen a game based on the Trinity that has such a shallow conflation between the 3 roles. If anyone know of an MMO that you believe implement the trinity in a similar fashion, drop the name and I'll be happy to check it out.

Given the examples you've put forth for "depth," and what must I assume you mean, then, by "conflation," I'd definitely recommend widening your horizons, as most action MMORPGs are more conflated than XIV -- anywhere from B&S to LA to GW2. That said, they aren't necessarily any worse for it.

It comes down to actual depth (the amount and interconnectedness of mechanics and action economies, or cognitive load therefrom), not just the portions each of a variably sized pie that a given "role" interfaces with. And, again, removing others from "your role's" categories of mechanics doesn't give you deeper mechanics for that space. It does nothing beyond removing your role, in turn, from the other categories of mechanics, often costing it synergetic value or even the ability for it to reach its own full depth.