Healers need an overhaul

[Rilifane]

Mind explaining what it does to the rest of the class?

Chloromancer had skills that healed while dealing damage, similiar to Assize, but also buffs and debuffs they had to apply for party members to get additional healing.
Think of things like Bloodbath but as an enemy debuff: every time a party member hit the target, they'd get healed. These debuffs as well as buffs that increased the healing taken were tied to dps spells so not dpsing was definitely not an option. DPS and healing kit were firmly tied into each other.
Applying debuffs to the target, buffs to the party and healing were all tied to dpsing in the first place, it didn't function as a "pure healer" because pure heals that didn't require dpsing were limited and expensive.

One thing Sage does have in common with Chloro that it gets stronger if you layer skills properly but not to the extend Chloro did.

I was really hoping for Sage to be like Chloro but really, I should've known better ... of course a "dps healer" would still have to be braindead and 3yo friendly, resulting in not being a dps healer at all. Slap Kardia on something with a tank stance, call it a day in the absolute majority of content.

... now I'm weeping.

[HyoMinPark]

If there is not much to heal in ultimate, why we do not see a lot of groups there without healer and just use self heal or heal pots? For me in the normal dungeons there is enough to heal and the small dmg i do as a healer is good enough with the 3 dmg spells, no button bloat needed here.
And yes if i like to do more dmg then i play dps.

I’ve been playing healers almost as long as I’ve played this game (since late 2015), and there really isn’t as much healing to do as you think there is. In fact, the healing in dungeons has tended to decrease as the years pass due to job changes indirectly nerfing the content (if the content isn’t directly nerfed by the dev team). I’ve raided Savage on healer, and I’ve cleared an Ultimate (UCoB) on a healer. Even with me playing safe in UCoB, I still spent more than half of my time dealing damage. Even if we stack all of my healing GCDs and oGCDs against my damage ones, my damage ones still win out when playing safe and overhealing like crazy. Let that sink in for a moment.

Content as it stands now barely needs a healer unless the party is full of a bunch of clowns or it’s Day 1 of a new piece of content (Day 1 Alliance raids are the most fun I have on a healer because I have to actually go into damage control and don’t just zzzzzz my way through it spamming my nuke all day). That’s the only time you’re doing any real amount of healing or actually feel like you’re a healer. Otherwise, you are a gimped damage dealer with a 1-button “rotation”. In 8-man and 24-man content, two healers in a party/alliance is almost redundant because 1 halfway decent healer can handle all the healing on their own while the other spams Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis the entire time. And the healer doing the brunt of the healing work can still spend most of their time casting damage spells over healing ones.


It has very little to do with “doing big D DPS numbers” and everything to do with engagement while on the role. What the “if I wanted to deal damage I’d just play a DPS” arguers fail to realize is that we aren’t asking to deal DPS-level amounts of damage. We are asking to be engaged while DPSing because that is what we spend the majority of our time doing anyways.

I'd be happy if healing was more 50/50 dps and actual healing, with more support style skills in there too.
Sage is almost there as far as I'm concerned, it has a couple more dps skills than the others, but really... that's just back where healers were 2 expansions ago.
Reimplementing AoE DoTs and one additional proc or combo based dps skill would probably be enough to make all the healers more interesting.

I…honestly don’t see the arguments that SGE is really that engaging. I raid Savage on SGE, and it’s basically just barrier healer version of WHM: braindead, requires very little thought outside of “do I place Kerachole here or Ixochole here”, and has the same “rotation” more or less. Except our “Assize” (Phlegma) has two charges that we either use for movement or just blow during burst windows.

The only healer that requires a modicum of thought is AST—and only if you are doing card optimization. If you are just playing your cards off CD and giving melee melee cards and ranged ranged ones, it is equally as braindead.

[Punslinger]

Jesus christ, the heale role is dead.

With apologies to Monty Python:

Yoshida: "Oh yes, the healer role. What's wrong with it?"

Healers: "I'll tell you what's wrong with it, it's dead, that's what's wrong with it."

Yoshida: "No, no it's accessible, look."

Healers: "Look my lad, I know a dead role when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now."

Yoshida: "Yeah, remarkable effects, that role, beautiful animations innit?"

Healers: "The animations don't enter into it, it's stone dead!"

Yoshida: "It's not, it's accessible!"

Healers: "Alright then, if it's accessible, I'll get someone to queue for it. Sprouty! I've got a nice Adventurer-In-Need bonus if you wake up, Sprouty! This is your daily tomestone roulette alarm call! (nobody queues) Now that's what I call a dead role."

Yoshida: "It's probably friendly for the sprouts."

Healers: "Friendly for the sprouts, what kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its back the moment Shadowbringers launched?"

Yoshida: "The healer role prefers kipping on its back! It's a beautiful role, lovely animations."

Healers: "Look, I took the liberty of examining that role, and I discovered that the only reason that it had been sitting on the Duty Finder in the first place was that it had been nailed there."

Yoshida: "Well, of course it was nailed there, otherwise it would've muscled up to those PFs and 'voom!'"

Healers: "Look, matey, this role wouldn't 'voom' if I put 4,000 item level through it, it's bleedin' demised."

Yoshida: "It's not, it's accessible."

Healers: "It's not accessible, it's passed on! This role is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its programmer! This, is a late role! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the Duty Finder, it would be pushin' up the daisies! It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This is an ex-role!"

[Ayer2015]

Everyone seems to have a different opinion on what would make healing better it seems. Realistically, expecting more incoming damage in lower tier content is simply not going to happen. I know how the forum healers love to say they never have to heal much, if ever, yet I've been in many pugs where healing is required. The devs need to balance content based on random people grouping and honestly not everyone plays to the same level.

That said, I strongly believe healers need a more engaging dps playstyle. I am also in favor of pairing down healers' healing tools as well. There is far too much redundancy in healing skills at the moment just for the sake of having more buttons.

[SieyaM]

For me AST is busy enough with card work that I feel best playing it than other healers, but we will see how this major update comes about for it. While I don't particularly care for Astrodyne or the way they bloated the buttons related to cards, I like that I am busy with something that is supporting the team that isn't just DPS. Healers definitely need something, more support options more DPS options or a healing kit that actually works together instead of all of these skills that heal a huge amount of HP that all work completely independently of each other. More skills that work like Horoscope or Plenary might be a good idea, things that work to enhance the healing skills or give them additional effects.

[SieyaM]

"Healers should heal" - i dont know but what and where ? What MMO does this ?
WoW = nope
GW2 = nope
ESO = nope
Lost Ark= nope
Black Deset = nope

Just to name some of the big one's and some of them dont even use the trinity system (tank, healer, dps). I dont know how or from what they draw the conclusion but no game i know of has the "healers should heal" nonsense. For a simple reason: Because its boring and bad game design.

Everquest does this, or at least it did last time I played. It's been a while so I am not sure what state it is in now, but most healing classes didn't do a lot of damage, and in the case of cleric at least you did none since your damage options were not worth the mana you would spend casting them. They had a lot of hybrid classes though, and classes that offered a myriad of buffs as well as heals or debuffs and DoT options.

[GrimGale]

Everquest does this, or at least it did last time I played. It's been a while so I am not sure what state it is in now, but most healing classes didn't do a lot of damage, and in the case of cleric at least you did none since your damage options were not worth the mana you would spend casting them. They had a lot of hybrid classes though, and classes that offered a myriad of buffs as well as heals or debuffs and DoT options.

The thing is, if you design classes that can both heal enough and deal damage, they will immediately outclass anything that only heals. If you then design encounters that have very high healing requirements that only that superspecialized healer can deal with then you make that class mandatory and that is not good either.

Also, again, healers are not asking to make healers themselves deal more damage, they just want more interesting downtime where there is nothing to heal or nothing to warrant immediate healing.

[Nethereal]

How the F is Sage 'fine'?

Obviously it's fine because this is the type of player Yoshi balances healers around.

[ClaudeHerel]

Play ultimate

[Rehayem]

I find it cute people are trying to come up with suggestions for SE to do something, little do y'all know they don't really care. Their aim is to make FFXIV kid friendly, and to do that everything has to be as simple as possible. In my current experience as it stands, the healer role in this game is currently absolute hot garbage, probably the worst I've come across so far. This isn't a healer role, this is just 1 dot, 1 DPS button mash for 99% of the time, starting from level 1 to level 90, sometimes throwing a heal here and there. I had done more healing in TERA, Aion, Archeage and even Rift online, but here? Laughable.

I'm a healer main for life, but I'm slowly starting to lose my own sanity playing any healer in FFXIV.