Healers need an overhaul

[ty_taurus]

SGE is by a mile my favorite job in terms of aesthetic and style. I'm looking toward 7.0 and really looking forward to seeing what changes about SGE come then. There's a lot of heat revolving around job design in general, so I feel like 7.0 is going to be a make or break point for this game, and if nothing changes, there might be an exodus of prominent players. This in combination with what SGE's identity is suppose to be gives me more faith that SGE may gain more offensive actions, but I'm very cautiously approaching this faith.

It makes me sad though how over EW I am, and it's only 6.28

[tearagion]

I know this post is older, but some things in the OP's post kind of made me wonder about some viewpoints here on the healer role.

I am a full time healer on FFXIV. I like to swap between the 4 jobs a lot, and do casual and higher end content with them. The reason why is because I actually do enjoy healing a lot! I think the designs of the jobs are very well done, but they are not perfect. Regardless, I think a lot of the problem stems from content more than anything.

What I mean by this is that a healer will perform very differently in high end duties compare to a healer who are just doing their roulettes for the day. Also to note, a healer progging will perform very different than a healer farming as well. Medica2 is every baby white mage's best friend, but they try to avoid it at all cost when they are very experienced into a high end fight.

As much as people might agree that some of the healer kit is useless... I just have to disagree because I think the healer role is very situational. During my P8S prog; I had to use Med2 and Cure2 during our prog just so we could survive to see the next mechanic. My co-healer encourages me to not use it, but I keep telling her that prog is prog and I will start to weed it out later once I figure out what works for the team when were not making so many mistakes.

I do understand that healer DPS can start to feel boring once every mechanic has been figured out, and every team member got it down, and I believe that is where these types of discussions start to pop up in the community. I can understand that because healers are typically the players who catch those who fall, and when things are great: we just kind of hang with the group in case something does happen, or fulfilling a mechanic that calls for us.

I believe having a more engaging DPS rotation isn't the solution, but more reasons to heal actually. This raid tier with all of their bleed and poison de-buffs was a real surprise and was really fun to work with. They also challenged the DPS and Tanks to do a bit of their end as well creating this teamwork in need to clear. Because everyone can do DPS already; having more responsibility in the survival department is really refreshing for me as a healer, and maybe the tanks too. Always having to boil down to DPS so hardcore doesn't make the game interesting, and I hope it starts to stem more away from that. That to me makes a healer role more exciting.

A good healer still ends up spamming broil >100 times in p8s phase 2, which is still as boring as it's ever been, and is still a bad "reward" for all that healing optimization you enjoy.

[ty_taurus]

I know this post is older, but some things in the OP's post kind of made me wonder about some viewpoints here on the healer role.

I am a full time healer on FFXIV. I like to swap between the 4 jobs a lot, and do casual and higher end content with them. The reason why is because I actually do enjoy healing a lot! I think the designs of the jobs are very well done, but they are not perfect. Regardless, I think a lot of the problem stems from content more than anything.

What I mean by this is that a healer will perform very differently in high end duties compare to a healer who are just doing their roulettes for the day. Also to note, a healer progging will perform very different than a healer farming as well. Medica2 is every baby white mage's best friend, but they try to avoid it at all cost when they are very experienced into a high end fight.

As much as people might agree that some of the healer kit is useless... I just have to disagree because I think the healer role is very situational. During my P8S prog; I had to use Med2 and Cure2 during our prog just so we could survive to see the next mechanic. My co-healer encourages me to not use it, but I keep telling her that prog is prog and I will start to weed it out later once I figure out what works for the team when were not making so many mistakes.

I do understand that healer DPS can start to feel boring once every mechanic has been figured out, and every team member got it down, and I believe that is where these types of discussions start to pop up in the community. I can understand that because healers are typically the players who catch those who fall, and when things are great: we just kind of hang with the group in case something does happen, or fulfilling a mechanic that calls for us.

I believe having a more engaging DPS rotation isn't the solution, but more reasons to heal actually. This raid tier with all of their bleed and poison de-buffs was a real surprise and was really fun to work with. They also challenged the DPS and Tanks to do a bit of their end as well creating this teamwork in need to clear. Because everyone can do DPS already; having more responsibility in the survival department is really refreshing for me as a healer, and maybe the tanks too. Always having to boil down to DPS so hardcore doesn't make the game interesting, and I hope it starts to stem more away from that. That to me makes a healer role more exciting.

I write for a game where the goal is to have story delivered to players in a multitude of ways: the main story experience as well as supplementary texts like journal entries, optional dialogue, and collectables that reveal background lore. Something we talk about often is that not everyone is going to read that text, so the story needs to be engaging and make sense to the people who won't read anything beyond the main story, for those that read what they collect, and for those that will go out of their way to collect and read everything. The point of narrative is to be enjoyed, and that means it must be enjoyed at all levels.

This is also true for gameplay in games. The healers need to be fun and engaging at all levels, whether you're running solo instances in the MSQ, grinding treasure map dungeons, grinding bicolor gems in FATEs, doing Savage reclears, or progging Ultimate. It also applies to appealing to players of all skill levels, whether you're new, casual, midcore, or hardcore.

We can agree that healing is failing to meet those standards given the content that we are presented with. However, I want to pose this question to you: What is more work, changing 4 jobs to provide a healthier experience in your game, or changing the entire game to provide a healthier experience for your 4 jobs? You could address content moving forward to give more reasons to heal, and on some level, this is achievable; however, it will never be enough to dramatically shift the focus of healer gameplay away from DPS and toward healing without disconnecting new content from past content, which in turn, radically shifts the difficulty spike.

Note that the healing requirements of this savage tier are record-breaking, yet have barely made a scratch in DPS uptime. And look at how many more casual healers haven't been able to keep up. Do you honestly think this game and this community could even handle redesigning the entire game to provide significant enough reasons to heal to actually take the focus away from DPS actions?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

How about more healing challenges?[snip...]

We finally do this tier, yes? What do we do after people learn where to stand, go, & what to do? Back to good old 1 button spam & that's what we still do majority of times? Like you said, it start to feel boring from that point. This is the part folks wants to have a change. Anything but Glaroilficosis spam.

More reason to heal? Sure, but just how many healing they can push us to do before the dps vs healing ratio is satisfied without alienating the less experienced healers? Because they already do to some extent. The more skilled healers will always, -always- have downtime. DPS check existing means there's also more reason to keep spamming that button however boring it is.

[...]They also challenged the DPS and Tanks to do a bit of their end as well creating this teamwork in need to clear. Because everyone can do DPS already; having more responsibility in the survival department is really refreshing for me as a healer, and maybe the tanks too. Always having to boil down to DPS so hardcore doesn't make the game interesting, and I hope it starts to stem more away from that. That to me makes a healer role more exciting.

On paper, I do agree with you on this one. On practice however, I felt very conflicted.

Healing has always been our primary responsibility, it contributes to the party's survivability so long it's useful healings. Yet, there's another factor that contributes to that: mitigating. This one over here is -not- entirely under our dominion, but look who gets most of the blame when that DPS forgot to throw their Addle/Feint & caused the squishy caster to drop dead in PF? This is just one of many examples which showcases the game's poor capability of teaching their players about mitigation; some even think mitigating & healing are interchangeable and should be at healer's hands entirely (I wish!).

Ever been told to "lol just GCD shield" by a SAM who for whatever reason 'can't' use their Feint at all in entire duration of encounter? Yeah... no. At that point the challenge becomes too artificial. Mind you, I would press that Feint for the SAM if I could. Will it make the healing/mitigating side of gameplay better if it were given to healer? I think yes, cause then I have more control over it; if there’s a mistake, the mistake is easier to spot instead of letting people guess by pointing fingers. But downtime wise? Still sucks—there has to be better ways than just 1211111.

[Zebraoracle]

I really wish people would stop using this tier as "oh hey look they're working on healing!" I can't speak for P8S yet, but P5-7S have been the same old, "solve the fight and spam your one DPS spell". The lauded DoTs people keep mentioning? Zero threat once your group is geared. The more rapid raid-wide damage? Cool, I *might* have to throw out a GCD heal.

I tend to play very carefully and put clears over damage measuring tools that totally don't exist, so I'll throw out more GCD heals than I should be, but even still I know "this is a waste of my MP and I shouldn't bother" in most cases.

I just mentioned to some friends this tier simultaneously boring the crap out of me so far and it making me feel like a garbage healer and they brought up "well healers wanted harder gameplay". Mmmm, I don't think that's what's going on here...

[Aravell]

For the people saying that healing requirements should be increased to fix healer engagement issues, think for a moment, how much increase would the healing requirements need in order to fully engage a veteran healer and remove a large portion of downtime? Would the average healer be able to keep up at all?

In the end, wouldn't such a move be much more destructive to the healer population than just giving something more to do during downtime?

[ty_taurus]

For the people saying that healing requirements should be increased to fix healer engagement issues, think for a moment, how much increase would the healing requirements need in order to fully engage a veteran healer and remove a large portion of downtime? Would the average healer be able to keep up at all?

In the end, wouldn't such a move be much more destructive to the healer population than just giving something more to do during downtime?

I'll add that downtime management doesn't have to translate to direct damage also. I've designed my own concept of my own AST rework that makes the majority of your GCD management dedicated to setting up your buff windows with your cards, generating DPS contributions passively while you focus on preparing for large offensive and defensive party buffs. That's not to say my idea is specifically perfect or the only solution, but that a little creativity can go a long way at creating something that can feel like a more dedicated supporter while still adhering to the balance expectations of FFXIV. Basically drawing and playing cards was moved to the GCD, and both actions would generate stars that orbit around you. You could weave an OGCD buff onto either yourself or any other party member, and that target's attacks would cause the stars to attack enemies for you, dealing malefic-potency damage per star consumed. The buffs you place don't trigger immediately, but are set on your allies for you to later activate all at once.

[Beddict]

For the people saying that healing requirements should be increased to fix healer engagement issues, think for a moment, how much increase would the healing requirements need in order to fully engage a veteran healer and remove a large portion of downtime? Would the average healer be able to keep up at all?

In the end, wouldn't such a move be much more destructive to the healer population than just giving something more to do during downtime?

Don't forget to ask if the challenge will remain as players get more and more geared up, something Zebra and others have pointed out. They can make a healing check challenging for Week 1, but will it still be challenging on Week 8 once people are geared? Most likely no since players will have more Def/Magic Def, more HP, and Healers will be able to heal more per oGCD. Either the fight needs a hard IL Sync that stops players from overgearing it (like DSR) or all the damage is gravity/demi type where it deals a percentage of the player's Max HP (like Eden's Gravity in E1S). Downtime is always gonna exist, even if they do bump healing requirements, and that's downtime needs to be engaging.

[technole]

I love SGE too a lot but this is a sad fact and truth.

Holos buff put it closer in available mitigation, already an excellent skill in itself, and we knew Scholar expedient would not make it into ultimate as-is because of how mechanic breaking it was. Fact that Sage is pretty good in DSR says a lot of how well the job is out of the gate. Details are useful like people don't need to be refined inside of bubbles like in the other jobs, hit everyone in yalms range, which is useful for many savage/ultimate mechanics where party splits up across arenas for damage. Plus gap closer to make this work. If you use all the buttons available, very comfy.

[tearagion]

For the people saying that healing requirements should be increased to fix healer engagement issues, think for a moment, how much increase would the healing requirements need in order to fully engage a veteran healer and remove a large portion of downtime? Would the average healer be able to keep up at all?

In the end, wouldn't such a move be much more destructive to the healer population than just giving something more to do during downtime?

Agree, seems far easier to just add some extra damage CDs or DoTs in that downtime instead huh...Might be onto something here.