Healers need an overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

It's a matter of quantity vs quality, or at least, a matter of width or depth. The current model insist everyone do a bit of everything, but also it means most of them are shallow.

Again, those two multipliers --breadth and depth of gameplay-- are only mutually exclusive if there is a fixed product. There isn't. There is no cohesive trend to this game's changes to kit or role breadth, depth, nor overall complexity outside of short-term placation of feedback actively half-ignored or misconstrued.

I propose a specialize model role that will allow more depth. Like ... does melee hitting feint, or a caster hitting addle once a blue moon (and also forget half of the time in PF) constitute meaningful and interesting gameplay?

In the case of that cherrypicked (relative to your earlier suggestions for the butcher's block) example, perhaps not. But removing it does not give you any more or less depth anywhere else (outside of, perhaps, decreases to maximal tuning as previously permitted by having fall-back skills that you just removed).

So now all tank can hit one button and give a party wide mitigation, but at the same time no longer have to worry about aggro management which is something that are much more identifiable to a tank.

I don't even know what you're trying to say here. Tanks already each have at least one raidwide eHP buff. And they are not degraded by the inclusion of Feint/Addle. The latter two simply mean that the raid doesn't live or die by a single messed up tank raid-miti cast, which means that, even while keeping the same relative difficulty/leniency, things can be tuned a little higher.

How does that different than Esuna yet you seem to have no problem with that ability being on the side line?

Because Esuna takes a mechanic that could have been dealt with by diverse means with varying, if subtle, nuances, and replaces it with a simple "cancels mechanic" button. It's only interesting when the timing of the cleanse is what forms the mechanic. In all other cases it actively makes things duller. Note: If there were a near-spammable Surecast, I'd hate that, too, for the same reason; it's axed the nuances of stutter-stepping, banking instant-casts (less frequently a thing today, but still there), etc., with just "press this."

How about instead of giving them one single button that's the most difficult part is "please remember to press it in time", let them focus on things that are MORE relevant to their role like ... idk, melee managing their TP (which was removed), or managing their MP (which has been neft to the point of irrelevant)?

Neither TP management or MP management ever existed in any sense beyond "You're basically not allowed to stack more SkS than the minimum rotational breakpoint tier without a NIN, in which case you still can only take one tier faster (and only if you don't have a Paladin, or pre-3.1 DRK)," and "Bring a second Bard; they're overtuned anyways."

And they're incredibly button-costly mechanics to support -- especially without a more flexible GCD and (though this should happen anyways) the removal of animation-ICD resets upon server confirmation of player actions -- for... very little value in terms of player satisfaction.

No, really, let's play out your "TP management" idea. That essentially requires that you have a way of playing that is more D/T/R (damage/time/resource) efficient and another that is more D/T efficient. But that still leaves you a gameplay loop of simply swapping in more D/T/R-efficient combos outside of CDs as (expected) fight length increases; that's it. And it's incompatible, even then, with any other mechanic that'd influence timing, such as non-stackable (de)buff durations or shorter synergetic CDs that you'd want to sync to a particular flow of actions rather than just tossing them into either/any combo.

And no, role identity, and what relevant is something is already well established over 20-30 of gaming history. Just because you want to frame it as my own "albitrary" decision doesn't make it so.

I've never said role identity wasn't a thing. You're strawmanning again.

I said simply that pruning the actual considerations behind tanking, healing, damage-dealing from all but their most obvious role never adds depth to those actions. On the contrary, it simply makes them far more automatic and, typically, mindless.

Remove any means or reason for a damage-dealer to take aggro and thereby kite or a healer to AoE burst heal and gather into a trap and soon enough, you've removed most anything worth kiting or trapping because you've mistaken tanking for something that tanks are instead something tanks do.

Unless you want to argue "aggro management" isn't naturally part of a tank job? Funny, healers currently can already do something like 50% DPS of an actual DPS, and only like 800-1500 behind a tank on average, that's an INSANE level of output ... yet isn't this whole argument started because it's too "boring".

Those two things (gameplay and external balance) have... almost nothing at all to do with each other. /smh

But, okay, let's address them. Having top aggro is synergetic fit to taking the least damage while being able to operate in a position that does not hurt party damage (or, say, healing, if the encounter ends from having healed X to full, etc.) output by more than it significantly eases the resource costs of party intake. You want to take little damage while not having to kite so chaotically that the party loses damage while chasing the mobs chasing you. From that, yes, the "tank" is born.

However, that does not mean, as per your suggestion, that tanks should then be only ones with any tools by which to tank (verb). Doing that means that you no longer having tanking so much as simply tanks who simply have to intercept adds once before proceeding thereafter to act like Damage-Dealers with a few repurposed buttons.

Only when there are meaningful decisions surrounding tanking, including when, where, how, and sometimes even who (sometimes it's not worth the cost of moving the tank and/or a mobile ranged serves just fine or there's something on the tank that requires a sturdy melee to step in) or why (a different reason for generating Enmity than just making sure you're the target) can a game milk tanking for all its depth. And that does not happen when people start trimming it down and hoarding what little remains for the sanctity of "role identity".

Healing is primarily a matter of fitting actions that meet/recuperate the costs of other actions (in terms of HP, in XIV's case, but other resources too in broader views of Support) into periods into which they have least cost, usually by gauging the relative costs of delay that recuperation (given knowledge or educated guesses of what further costs are to come) against the relative costs of delaying some competing long-term-output actions (in terms of CD sync, window optimization, the need to finish something off as quickly as possible to reduce the rate of those costs, combos, and other synergies). Yes, it therefore makes sense to have the person who's most able to evaluate those costs have less to worry about in their rotations and more ways to fill the gaps responsively, preemptively, and/or with more granular control.

However, it does not mean, as per your suggestions, that healers should be the only one with tools with which to address those costs. On the contrary, it tends to leave all others blind to their economy of resources and, thereby, the opportunity costs they incur with their actions, while also giving less depth to what it means to be a healer (for which, in other MMOs, tracking party defensive CDs is a very real part). Similarly, it does not mean that healers must have zero depth to their own contributions to long-term output (only ever damage in XIV, as we really don't like to design fight objectives in more than a single manner); such would deny them a very real way of interfacing with the complexity of healing (and one that affects skill ceiling, anyways -- not the skill floor).

Granted, I may be presenting my idea from the best angle but at the very least, it comes from actual existing examples.

Like which? I've yet to see you present one that actually did what you've been asking for.

Then you have not read what other had posted, neither you had play many other games. The pattern here it seems people on that side of argument seem to use the "healer heal is boring" to dimiss any alternative suggestion when others had provided plenty of idea, example, and even proof that healers can do a lot of things that relevance to their "job" beside just spamming heal, yet you and yours keep insisting on dismissing that idea despite the fact that FF14 is on the minority side when it comes to this particular issue.

At this point, you'll need to define what you even think this "you and yours" is, because it doesn't seem likely to be a camp existent outside your head.

See how there are lot of suggestions aimed at increasing the depth/complexity of healing?

See how some get support and others don't?

It's not because only a random group were attacked or dismissed by a forum cabal. They were simply bad ideas, largely because they wouldn't increase the depth/complexity of healing (i.e., no upsides) despite, say, likely increasing exclusion at a greater rate than they'd increase actual complexity (i.e., raising the required skill floor far more than the skill ceiling, thus reducing the space between for healers to enter and grown, which would be a downside).

But personally, I have never seen a game based on the Trinity that has such a shallow conflation between the 3 roles. If anyone know of an MMO that you believe implement the trinity in a similar fashion, drop the name and I'll be happy to check it out.

Given the examples you've put forth for "depth," and what must I assume you mean, then, by "conflation," I'd definitely recommend widening your horizons, as most action MMORPGs are more conflated than XIV -- anywhere from B&S to LA to GW2. That said, they aren't necessarily any worse for it.

It comes down to actual depth (the amount and interconnectedness of mechanics and action economies, or cognitive load therefrom), not just the portions each of a variably sized pie that a given "role" interfaces with. And, again, removing others from "your role's" categories of mechanics doesn't give you deeper mechanics for that space. It does nothing beyond removing your role, in turn, from the other categories of mechanics, often costing it synergetic value or even the ability for it to reach its own full depth.