Healers need an overhaul

[BaconBits]

I have never heard of Misshapen Chair until now but he is very fluent in speaking fax.

https://youtu.be/1d_fMH9Lwvs

[Avoidy]

The less depth there is in the game in general, the harder it is to make engaging support jobs. For example, TP is no longer a thing, and MP is useless for most jobs. If this were not the case, then we might see a healer with MP/TP restorative elements in its kit. This helps the party, while giving the healer something to do during downtime that isn't just tapping the dps button. In essence, the game needs an overhaul to make healing feel better. Even if you just wanted to keep the kits we have now, they're so overtuned for like 95% of the game's content because the devs are scared of making normal modes have any teeth at all. My hopes aren't high. But I agree with you, OP. I want to feel engaged while healing across difficulty levels.

[Semirhage]

I have never heard of Misshapen Chair until now but he is very fluent in speaking fax.

https://youtu.be/1d_fMH9Lwvs

I'm glad that there are content creators finally pointing out the bad healer design elephant in the room. Maybe that'll create traction, maybe it won't. The Cassandra in me urges caution though: I've seen Chair's takes on healers, and he really seems to get what vet healers are complaining about. For the *most* part. I just also see hints of what I like to call the DPS blinders; there's this thing where someone who mains a DPS class and maybe occasionally heals doesn't fully get what support job mains find entertaining, and an extra quadruple dose of DPS blinders explains a -lot- about the bad direction healer design has gone in the last few expansions. I saw a bit of it in his "parsers are bad" video, mainly the line about healers "chasing imaginary numbers instead of keeping people alive".

The thing is, in the part of the video he said that, everyone WAS alive. They were just at low HP.

DPS blinders goes something like "healers are supposed to heal". See, DPS jobs chase their skill ceiling by maximizing the output of their primary role. That's an oversimplification, but it's easy to understand. Support jobs chase their skill ceiling by minimizing theirs. Figuring out how little you can get away with is part of getting better at the role. That "stress" that Square is hellbent on chasing out of the role is why people main it in the first place. You want to pull people back from the brink of death at the last second. That's the point. I hope that people who actually main healer jobs follow in the wake of this. It's why I like Lucy Pyre's videos more, because she was a healer main. She gets it. You can tell when a DPS main is talking about healers, because you get the sense that they don't quiiiiiiite get it. And that's okay, that's not the high they're chasing. But put someone with those blinders stapled to their face in charge of designing the role, and well...

[Sebazy]

Misshapen Chair's video is good but I think he's over thinking the recent trends in job design trying to rationalise SE's decisions over the last couple of expansions.

I still stand by my healer designer thread from years ago and I think this lack of manpower and experience within the core job design team is forcing them to homogenise and streamline things to keep everything manageable within the limitations of the tiny team they have to work with.

I saw a bit of it in his "parsers are bad" video, mainly the line about healers "chasing imaginary numbers instead of keeping people alive".

The thing is, in the part of the video he said that, everyone WAS alive. They were just at low HP.

Honestly, this is a pretty common viewpoint and amusingly its this exact thing that's had me keep my spot in such a high end FC despite how hilariously bad my logs generally are.

*edit*

Out of curiosity, I just double checked the credits:

Kei Sato - Battle Director

Takashi Kawamoto - Battle System Designers
Hikaru Tamaki
Hironori Isami

So nothings changed since Shadowbringers. Isami isn't listed as a Junior designer anymore but that's it. Best case, that's 4 full time job designers and that's assuming that Sato doesn't get pulled away for overarching game direction work given his senior role.

Keep in mind that this is the same sized team that ARR launched with, with literally half the number of jobs not to mention far fewer abilities per job.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ealer-designer.

Talk about ageing like a fine wine

[Pepino]

Heya, while I’ve owned FF14 for some time now I never really started playing it as I was a WoW fanboy but now has seen the light, while in WoW I mained Resto Shaman in all end game content getting Cutting Edge which is like your Ultimate Raids but would love to give a few insight from a healer playing both games.

While I really am focusing more in FF14 now as AST and SCH it does become a little mind numbing when theirs not much to do but it’s really hard to give solid feedback as basically every healer in FF14 basically plays the same. Theirs really no specialists in healing besides Pure Healer/Regen and Barrier Healer.

In WoW you’d try to bring multiple healers for their specific roles and unique cool-downs, granted they have 20 player raids so you tend to bring 4/5 healers, but I feel like that seems to be the problem in FF14, it’s gotten to a point where every healing job is basically like the other, just one regens while the other shields and even that isn’t truely unique as most healing jobs have a few spells that do the opposite.

For example Paladins in WoW are the kings of Tank Healing as their mastery bonus (a stat), heals more the closer they are to the target, while brining immunity bubbles, Restoration Shamans bring mana tide totem (mana regen) and spirit link totem (It reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. Every second it also redistributes the health of all affected players so everyone has the same percentage of their maximum health), which is massive..

But that’s what I think is what’s the game is lacking, maybe reduce the amount of heals each class has but then implement more class specific abilities unique to them, make each healing job bring something amazing to the table unique to them.

Healing DPS is hard to fix, while in WoW, as A Resto Shaman on single target honestly it’s 3 buttons, Lightning Bolt, Flame Shock and cast Lava burst when Flame Shock procs a instant cast lava burst, but you always busy healing so it’s not that much of an issue while in FF14 a lot of abilities can be dodged or minimised by stacking mechanics or range damage drop off.

It was a huge change coming from WoW to FF14, being used to procs to use abilities and more consistent healing I feel like FF14 is very “casual” friendly, which is good and bad.

While I never played the jobs in other expansions, and only played FF14 really for 9 weeks I do feel healers could benefit from a more dps focused rotation, I love how they’ve done the new PvP, like why can’t these new abilities make room into PvE?, WHM have seraph strike, SCH Mummification (reduce damage dealt in exchange for reduce healing received in PvE) and AST double cast. I think Sages Skills are available in PvE and PvP.

But that’s just a Band-Aid fix but will definitely add a little more to do. Personally I feel like each healer is to similar, once you’ve played one you’ve played them all it seems.

[Nethereal]

But that’s what I think is what’s the game is lacking, maybe reduce the amount of heals each class has but then implement more class specific abilities unique to them, make each healing job bring something amazing to the table unique to them.

They're afraid to do this because of balance~ They don't want to create a meta yet fail to realize their lack of action has already created one.

I'm honestly fairly resentful that the game could be so much more pve wise but the devs are scared of arbitrary numbers and meta so they refuse to do anything fun in relevant content.

[Pepino]

They're afraid to do this because of balance~ They don't want to create a meta yet fail to realize their lack of action has already created one.

I'm honestly fairly resentful that the game could be so much more pve wise but the devs are scared of arbitrary numbers and meta so they refuse to do anything fun in relevant content.

I 100% agree, there will always be a meta but I’ve always said player skill trumps meta classes, but I seriously been researching a lot and it seems through each expansion most healing jobs keep losing what use to make them unique through each expansion, for example I’d love AST to get Diurnal Sect & Nocturnal Sect back, I feel that would of been a great start of making healing jobs unique, AST being a healing job that could then be flexible with any co-healer.

But it seems they have 2 choices really, either overhauling end game content where theirs more consistent damage so we have to heal more which then brings issues with MP which would have to be adjusted, or completely overhauling every healing job making them actually have a semi dps rotation to do during the down time when healing isn’t necessary.

I’ve heard from reading the forums AST is getting reworked, so this might be a great indication of the direction they are choosing to go with. Personally I’d love to see Healers getting perhaps their PvP skills incorporated into to their PvE kit and perhaps throw in some proc based interactions to help keep us busy, Combust has a 30 - 40% chance per tick to make your next Fall Malefic instant cast, then with the PvP ability you double cast it which then reduces the the cool-down of double cast by 7.5 seconds like how double cast works in PvP would be nice.

It’s hard to say exactly how to mend this issue, I’ve played 17 years of WoW, so I’m pretty use to how WoW works and I do enjoy how they’ve made each healer feel unique, while yes there is a meta in WoW I’ve never had issues playing non-meta classes/specs doing all high end content, that really only affected those who did the race to world first.

But I’m interested to see how Square Enix addresses this issue if they ever do, because honestly maintaining combust every 30 seconds and spamming Fall Malefic is a little lack luster.

[ASkellington]

The less depth there is in the game in general, the harder it is to make engaging support jobs. For example, TP is no longer a thing, and MP is useless for most jobs. If this were not the case, then we might see a healer with MP/TP restorative elements in its kit.

See AST's card problem for more information.

AST had MP/TP restoration. Spire (I believe) and Ewer (as seen in PvP currently).

I would LOVE for MP to matter outside of Raise and DRK. I don't think we're going to see that.

[Semirhage]

Honestly, this is a pretty common viewpoint and amusingly its this exact thing that's had me keep my spot in such a high end FC despite how hilariously bad my logs generally are.

Yeah, I've seen the viewpoint pretty often too. I think DPS and Tank mains really have no idea just how infrequent AOE damage in this game is. Yeah I left you at 30% health for 20 seconds, random phantom DPS player. What are you scared of? We're in a dungeon, it's not like the boss is going to do anything.

[AziraSyuren]

The game was worse in an imbalanced state than it is in its current one. The devs could not design meaningful support abilities without making them so overpowering that not having them made the game less fun.

Like, I get the desire for something better, and I get that imbalance placed in the right places makes the game more fun, but people want something that the dev team has shown no desire or even ability to actually do. Healing is frankly the only time that the devs have given us something that we didn't ask for. And even in this day and age, people still get unreasonably mad whenever there's an imbalanced thing that adds flavor to a job, like AST trivializing that one mechanic in P3S.