Healers need an overhaul

[Nizzi]

My basic issue with healer design is this:
Currently, as a healer my enjoyment of all instanced content is greater when other players are getting hurt or dying a lot. It challenges me to deal with mana, and use my full kit of healing actions. But think about the other side, the player who is dying a lot and getting hit by mechanics - when I am in that situation, it feels bad, and I do not have fun.

So why is my enjoyment of content built on other people not enjoying it?

Because if you had more than 2 buttons to hit in between the telegraphed raidwides, you might start deriving your fun from your DPS, and that might take you away from making sure DPS and tanks stay topped up at all times. /s

[ty_taurus]

My basic issue with healer design is this:
Currently, as a healer my enjoyment of all instanced content is greater when other players are getting hurt or dying a lot. It challenges me to deal with mana, and use my full kit of healing actions. But think about the other side, the player who is dying a lot and getting hit by mechanics - when I am in that situation, it feels bad, and I do not have fun.

So why is my enjoyment of content built on other people not enjoying it?

Honestly, I think the best way to summarizes what the issue is with healer design is that its only gameplay loop is dependent on the failure of the healer, their party, or both. If you and your party perform well, healing has no gameplay loop at all. Healing design has been in direct opposition to content design for years and creates an experience that's fun at first, but becomes boring and lifeless after someone gets better at the role and the game. Healers have far too many healing actions for the little damage players are forced to deal with and nothing to do with their GCD spells other than mash 1 button upwards of 160 times per 10ish minutes.

What's even more frustrating about the gameplay loop situation is that in harder content, the gameplay loop of failure largely results in wipes, not clears. The best and most fun parts of healing almost never result in victory. Many of the areas that players typically continue to mess up as well are things that healers cannot solve in Savage. Someone messed up P2S limit cut? There's almost nothing I can do about that. You can't heal through most of what continues to screw people over because the mechanics are largely pass/fail.

What healers want is not to be challenged at every step of the game from dungeons and solo instances all the way to Ultimate. We just want a solid gameplay loop at all times to ensure all content is entertaining all the time, not just when faced with failure. Healing resources need to be reworked to actually compliment the gameplay we have, and this can be done while also creating a stable safety net for casual healers. But the devs also need to acknowledge and respect that at the end of the day, DPS is the metric healers use to judge the value of their action usage. Not every healer needs to spend most of their time DPSing, but those that don't need to find a way around that to still contribute without needing to directly attack.

[Fukuro]

It‘s mind boggling and very demotivating to see the devs work against any suggestions even going so far to twist the meaning of complaints about healing in this game. (lol not difficult enough? just do ultimate). Your player base consists of about 80% casual players. Let us also have fun across all tiers of difficulty! You don’t need to raise the difficulty bar per se, just make the healer role enjoyable throughout all of your content - and don’t give suggestions about something that hardly one percent does (Ultimate). Healers are by far one of the most boring jobs in this game. Sage doesn’t help either, as it’s just a cooler looking Scholar at this point. As a healer you simply can ignore 90% of your healing kit up to savage level of difficulty and whats left is dumb repetition of 1 skill.Nobody can tell me that there is no clear job bias going on. I am a former healer main, it‘s just simply obnoxious that every opinion gets nipped in the bud or simply changed so much just to avoid the question. And as someone palying since ARR it just hurts to see healers getting robed of their identity.
I‘ve always appreciated what the devs have done for us, but I must say I‘ve been very disappointed and dissatisfied with a lot of things going on recently…

[Nizzi]

It‘s mind boggling and very demotivating to see the devs work against any suggestions even going so far to twist the meaning of complaints about healing in this game. (lol not difficult enough? just do ultimate). Your player base consists of about 80% casual players. Let us also have fun across all tiers of difficulty! You don’t need to raise the difficulty bar per se, just make the healer role enjoyable throughout all of your content - and don’t give suggestions about something that hardly one percent does (Ultimate). Healers are by far one of the most boring jobs in this game. Sage doesn’t help either, as it’s just a cooler looking Scholar at this point. As a healer you simply can ignore 90% of your healing kit up to savage level of difficulty and whats left is dumb repetition of 1 skill.Nobody can tell me that there is no clear job bias going on. I am a former healer main, it‘s just simply obnoxious that every opinion gets nipped in the bud or simply changed so much just to avoid the question. And as someone palying since ARR it just hurts to see healers getting robed of their identity.
I‘ve always appreciated what the devs have done for us, but I must say I‘ve been very disappointed and dissatisfied with a lot of things going on recently…

At the least, it took them years to address Living Dead, but they finally did. The more of us who make noise, the harder it is to ignore us.

[Renalt]

Until they make healers more engaging...I play my healers if I just want some quick dungeons and I can turn my brain off and still somehow get all the comms.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]And as someone palying since ARR it just hurts to see healers getting robed of their identity.

I see what you did there.

Until they make healers more engaging...I play my healers if I just want some quick dungeons and I can turn my brain off and still somehow get all the comms.

Sad to read, but I don't blame you. Just like some youtuber said: "You're only here just because Duty Finder says you have to be."

[Tychonius]

The problem with healers in MMORPGs is always the same:
- In order for you to feel like you're needed and your job is challenging the party has to take enough damage that they would die if you weren't there.
- In order for you to succeed in your role the party has to not die from all that damage.
- Since no content can be completed unless the healer succeeds in their role people simply expect the healer to negate all regular damage.
- Once regular damage never kills anyone there need to be mechanics that kill people even when they do get healed.
- Once every fight contains mechanics that can't be healed through those become the de facto challenge to stay alive in the game.

Basically healers are victims of their own success. In order for healers to be needed people need to die without them. In order for healers to succeed once they are needed people need to never die. The game has to invent new mechanics just to create danger that healers can't negate. Those mechanics become the real challenge of the game. Healers become kind of irrelevant simply because they were so good at their job that they had to be made irrelevant to still have any challenge.

One thing they could do to make actually casting healing spells a little more attractive would be adding something like an overheal bar to people, where if you heal them when they are at full health they become powered up. That extra power can be burned off to make attacks stronger, so a healer can indirectly contribute to DPS by keeping the DPS characters topped off with overheal to burn rather than having to be a pseudo DPS themselves.

[IDontPetLalas]

The problem with healers in MMORPGs is always the same:
- In order for you to feel like you're needed and your job is challenging the party has to take enough damage that they would die if you weren't there.
- In order for you to succeed in your role the party has to not die from all that damage.
- Since no content can be completed unless the healer succeeds in their role people simply expect the healer to negate all regular damage.
- Once regular damage never kills anyone there need to be mechanics that kill people even when they do get healed.
- Once every fight contains mechanics that can't be healed through those become the de facto challenge to stay alive in the game.

Basically healers are victims of their own success. In order for healers to be needed people need to die without them. In order for healers to succeed once they are needed people need to never die. The game has to invent new mechanics just to create danger that healers can't negate. Those mechanics become the real challenge of the game. Healers become kind of irrelevant simply because they were so good at their job that they had to be made irrelevant to still have any challenge.

One thing they could do to make actually casting healing spells a little more attractive would be adding something like an overheal bar to people, where if you heal them when they are at full health they become powered up. That extra power can be burned off to make attacks stronger, so a healer can indirectly contribute to DPS by keeping the DPS characters topped off with overheal to burn rather than having to be a pseudo DPS themselves.

I don't see why healers are anyone's victims, least of all their own.

I agree that part of our role is to ensure that we heal through unavoidable damage, however part of our role is also to buff (if we have that available) and to do damage. If other roles expect us to routinely heal all avoidable damage, that's not my concern. I want to be clear - that does not mean that i leave someone lying on the floor or that I purposely torture them to leave them with extremely low health - however there is no need whatsoever to continually spam regens and keep topping people off all of the time, or try to go above 100 % health.

So this is why your overheal really doesn't make sense- it sounds like either it is trying to solve a "hey you guys don't like to heal, so here's a way to encourage you' or 'you guys are curebots, so we'll find a way to have you contribute to damage in spite of yourselves".

No thanks. I want a design that allows for the same respect that other jobs get- where healers get to make some judgement and their toolkit provides for weaving of DPS with heals, or when the use of a heal is integrate with damage (as in AST) - and don't call me a pseudo DPS for wanting that either.

By the way - this problem is not the same in all MMOs.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem with healers in MMORPGs is always the same:
- In order for you to feel like you're needed and your job is challenging the party has to take enough damage that they would die if you weren't there.

This isn't actually always the case. That may be the case for lockstep "only tanks can tank!" Trinity MMORPGs, but not all. For others, the run/clear simply has to go faster on average for your being there. That can be due to being able to take further risks (countering avoidable damage for further uptime and ease). That can be due to not having to methodically sacrifice certain players over time (countering unavoidable damage). That can be due to useful buffs that only supports/"healers" bring by which to hit useful rotational or performance thresholds. Etc., etc.

But the requirement at the end of the day is that healers produce greater efficiency, or make similar efficiency more convenient, than their alternatives, at least up to having taken some number of them. They do not need to hold all runs hostage to their presence for them to feel fun, let alone worthwhile.

- In order for you to succeed in your role the party has to not die from all that damage.

The party as a whole? Yes. Any and every individual member? Not necessarily.

- Since no content can be completed unless the healer succeeds in their role people simply expect the healer to negate all regular damage.

That's not a thing, and has never been a thing, even here in XIV. People expect unavoidable damage to be healed to the degree they are sure to survive the next unavoidable hit. Getting healed earlier than that is a bonus.

- Once regular damage never kills anyone there need to be mechanics that kill people even when they do get healed.

No, even healers' presence being obliged (via the matchmaker or otherwise) does not oblige fight design to have eventual one-shots.

- Once every fight contains mechanics that can't be healed through those become the de facto challenge to stay alive in the game.

They become a challenge. That they are the only challenges in XIV, specifically, merely points to the incredibly low healing requirements in this game (both in terms of GCDs spent and [how little] strategic healer play [is] even possible).

[Deceptus]

Basically healers are victims of their own success. In order for healers to be needed people need to die without them. In order for healers to succeed once they are needed people need to never die. The game has to invent new mechanics just to create danger that healers can't negate. Those mechanics become the real challenge of the game. Healers become kind of irrelevant simply because they were so good at their job that they had to be made irrelevant to still have any challenge.

The simplest solutions would be to simply have mechanics that only healers can negate (Doom for example, paralysis, cleansable damage down debuffs). If bosses put doom on tanks you'd instantly see tank solo-ing 8 man bosses stop.

Another solution is consistent damage, not damage spikes every 45s. This would also force tanks to learn their mitigation kits or die.