Healers need an overhaul

[Lilapop]

Except that's your argument, not anyone else's.

Healing doesn't stress out healers.

Being a "healer" stresses out healers when there is so little to do that makes use of their kit and so few ways by which for that kit to contribute.

so you're saying having nothing to do is stressful? i must be missing something... because how? find it boring, mundane, and unnecessary, sure. but stressful? if they're unable to contribute at all with their current kits that is on them not utilizing it to the proper extent.

[Shurrikhan]

so you're saying having nothing to do is stressful? i must be missing something... because how? find it boring, mundane, and unnecessary, sure. but stressful?

You say that like frustration can't contribute to stress...

______________

"The party's life is in your hands."

But, beyond the rare AoE oGCD heal, that really just means you are responsible (since surely you've nothing else to do with the 3/4s of your kit) for undoing individual mistakes, which occur sporadically and rapidly stack in intensity.

You have 28 buttons. 2, your pure mitigation CDs, are on cooldown. Your DoT is up. The remaining 25 buttons amount to choices which mostly push out one another, and about 7 of which are utterly traps. Between the lot of them, you essentially have two choices, (A) Overheal or (B) spam Dosis more.

As you contemplate how any kit could actually be so wasteful, little Timmy takes an avoidable goop-bath. Then a few more. Finally, you have a point and purpose to your presence if only if he'd take another in the near future, which you can help him survive. But wait, if takes one more, he'll be one-shot on the next regardless.

You've a wasteful number of tools, yet none of them empower you to really deal with the situations on which your ability to even use more than a handful of those skills depends in the vast majority of content.

The less a kit is able to be leveraged in multiple, seemingly integral and/or intended ways, the more context seems to determine the whole of said kit. Rather than "How can I best contribute?" the more pertinent question seems to be "Do I really even have a job?" And that's not something the player can decide beyond choosing to go into particular fights that might actually give it something to do vs. experiencing the other 99.9% of the game. Which, yes, is frustrating, sometimes to the point of stress.

[IDontPetLalas]

healers ALREADY being dps is one of the problems? it was implied in the original post of whoever posted it, healing stresses out healers. so why on earth would it make sense to pile more on what they already can't manage?

Nothing of that kind was implied in OP's post - first paragraph:

"I have a great respect for FFXIV and the devs that create it but I feel like the design of healers in this game is kind of ridiculous. Why is it that healers are the only role that get an extremely lackluster DPS rotation yet are still required to contribute significant amounts of DPS to clear difficult content? Like, in what world is a 1-button spammed DPS rotation okay for ANY JOB in PVE content? Well, after playing this game for 8 years now and weathering all the various changes to the jobs I honestly think we've hit the point where healers seriously need to be redesigned."

The rest continues in a similar vein. Lack of engagement does noe equate to incompetence. If anything, OP may be frustrated or stressed due to boredom but I wouldn't want to imply anything about his/her/their mental state. I only know that having only 1 skill to hit when no one needs heals (and I have no buffs to apply) isn't exciting for me.

Once again, repeating an argument that draws a false conclusion enough times does not make it true. This is basic logical thinking- a valid argument can have a true conclusion only if all of the premises are true.

[Irenia]

healers ALREADY being dps is one of the problems? it was implied in the original post of whoever posted it, healing stresses out healers. so why on earth would it make sense to pile more on what they already can't manage?

I've been ruminating on this.

Assume encounter design stays the same. If healing is stressful as is, making healing harder in content is counterproductive to that goal, at least.

First, let's rebrand "DPS" as "actions taken to end the fight faster". I've seen mention of buffs and debuffs, but we really don't need more buttons that stop us from dying, so that leaves us with it's inverse. If SCH had a complicated rotation to debuffs the enemies' defenses, this is equivalent to a SGE blasting an enemy with lasers for the healer deeps, so let's not let mechanical flavor get in the way here.

As such, the argument in favor of the stressed healers becomes to make the healers straightforward to the point that there is no nuance and nothing interesting inherently in the role; if something is interesting, that's a new variable that can cause further stress.

But the veteran's complaint is that there is not enough complexity in the role. And because encounter design isn't changing, we would need complexity for the "end encounter faster" buttons. So healers would be discount DPS on top of keeping people alive.

So, that means we are stuck. If downtime becomes interesting and fun, then engaging with it becomes a qualifier for player skill, and the stressed will have to come to terms with that and not let this weigh upon them. I personally think the community as a whole can probably handle it; we deal with freestyle DPS and no cool down tanks well enough in the easy content.

If SE changes their minds and increase the difficulty of healing across the board so not dying is engaging in of itself, well, as said before, that's just bonus stress for the stressed out.

As such, I currently am of the mind that the bored veteran and the stressed healer cannot come to terms; their desire for the game pull in opposite directions. Not to say that this is perfect, but this is where I stand as of now...

[Sebazy]

healers ALREADY being dps is one of the problems? it was implied in the original post of whoever posted it, healing stresses out healers. so why on earth would it make sense to pile more on what they already can't manage?

It's not the healing that's stressing these sorts of players out though. Simply coping with mechanics even in simple content like 24 man raids is more than some can handle, pressing just about anything whilst trying to keep a tab on what's happening around them is beyond some some players.

This is compounded by the fact that this game arguably goes too far in coddling such a low standard of play, I'm not talking about people who simply don't DPS, I'm talking about people who struggle to press more than a button every 10 seconds or so in casual content. The game makes it far too easy to get right up to the door of Extreme and Savage content without ever making even the slightest bit of effort to understand your kit or even the concept of your job in general. Instead it just apologetically shoves more gear and easier modes your way until eventually you manage to crawl over the ripple in the pavement that is this game's casual challenge curve.

Tuning the game and making balance decisions around this kind of player is just daft because short of having a stance with an aoe medica II aura around them, they'll never not be stressed as a healer. It's just that it's more obvious to everyone around them when they are on a healer, DPS is basically irrelevant outside of Extremes and above and Tanks can practically /beesknees for agro at this point.

[anhaato]

This person is definitely doing this on purpose, I’ll never be convinced they’re not a troll.

[Silver-Strider]

snip.

Because that's how the game is designed. Kill X before it kills you. No amount of superfluous support skills are going to miraculously extend the time you have to beat a boss.

Every Healer quest involves fighting in some way shape or form and while they have mechanics for healers (as laughably easy as they've become) you also can't sit there spamming Cure 1 and successfully complete those quests. Same for any quest really. Solo instants as a healer are an absolute slog because the damage you take is so low you never need to heal but they take forever because you only have 1 button to spam the entire time. Even Trust NPCs spend the majority of the time spamming their DPS spells instead of sitting there waiting to heal.

Nothing in this game supports a "Healers should Heal" mentality. I'm not throwing Cure to beat Lahabrea, Thordan, Nidhogg, Zenos, or Emet. I can't shield my way thru their fights and hope they get bored of attacking me. I have to fight back but all I have is some rocks and a gentle breeze to do so.

FFXIV was the 1st MMO I ever played and the experience when I first started vs the experience now is literally night and day. I was never bored of my Healers back in ARR when I was managing 2 DoTs, going in and out of Cleric Stance to do damage, shielding and healing allies with Stoneskin and the rest of my standard GCD healing skills. HW gave me some more oGCDs that were appreciated but they also gave me Aero 3 so I still could fight with. It wasn't until SB when things started going backwards with them removing more of my toolkit and giving me too many oGCDs while outsourcing my old responsibilities to Tanks/DPS instead that things started becoming a problem. Then we get to ShB and Healers have become an absolute joke of themselves. Fairies are glamours, Cards do the same thing, attack options we used to have were replaced with even more unnecessary healing skills and EW just doubled down on that philosophy. Imagine starting a new job that you loved because it was challenging and engaging with plenty of opportunities for advancement but as the years went on, your job responsibilities kept getting outsourced over seas until you're just there to cover some minor paperwork that you could do in your sleep and there's no longer any opportunity for growth. The next step is just layoffs as your position gets shut down entirely and your looking for a new job.

That's where healers are right now. We've asked for our responsibilities back and have been ignored. We're told to shut up by the new people that like the easy workload and think any extra workload would be too hard, completely unaware of how the job was in the past. Giving 1 or 2 extra responsibilities isn't the end of the world and I'm tired of everyone and there mother saying it would be. It worked fine before and could work fine now.

[Shurrikhan]

o amount of superfluous support skills are going to miraculously extend the time you have to beat a boss.

Well... unless the Enrage itself is a 1.x style mob TP skill and said support skill drains that TP, the Enrage is a stacking buff some contributor to which that can be purged via a skill like Repose to delay it, etc., etc.

But that'd require actual support, rather than just Push-Green-Bars-Rightward, skills....

[Silver-Strider]

Well... unless the Enrage itself is a 1.x style mob TP skill and said support skill drains that TP, the Enrage is a stacking buff some contributor to which that can be purged via a skill like Repose to delay it, etc., etc.

But that'd require actual support, rather than just Push-Green-Bars-Rightward, skills....

There are many features from 1.x that are better left dead.

[Shurrikhan]

There are many features from 1.x that are better left dead.

Was simply noting that there are, technically, ways to give supports something to do that affects long-term objectives or constraints, even in fights that are given timers and/or completed by damage, besides just damage.

Such is not a critique of damage nor praise for 1.x.... Not sure why you'd construe it as such.