Healers need an overhaul

[Coatl]

I just don't understand why the party has entirely more control over who lives or dies than you do as a healer. No party mit? Party dies. You have no say in the matter. Especially annoying in a static scenario where usually the healer is going to be assigning/micro-managing DPS mit anyway.

Cut the middle man out and just give healers these tools back. There was no reason to remove virus/addle from healers and give them to DPS.

[Aravell]

Unfortunately, Yoshi P and the Devs are aware of the opposed arguments. Both the "more damage buttons" and the "more healing requirement" ones. So, too, are they likely aware of the "leave things alone" arguments.

We'll see, in time, what (if anything) they plan to do about it. But for a surety, it probably isn't what you think/want alone/in vacuum.

I think one thing most everyone can agree on is that the current situation is in need of changing. Those who are fine with the encounter design may dislike the job design, those who are fine with job design may dislike the encounter design, and then there are also people that think both need to change.

There's no way to know for sure how big or small the population of people who want nothing to change is, but it's an undeniable fact that the healer role has been losing players, though everyone leaving for different reasons.

[Zebraoracle]

I think you're missing mine. All I'm saying is good parties will always need less healing than bad parties. Complaining that it's bad game design is like complaining that red is red. No matter what any game company comes up with, it will be the case.

HOWEVER, that's not to say something can't be done about it. As you point out, WoW has( had? it's been awhile) a healer having to manage both their mana, their aggro, and cooldowns. I loved it!

Now the question is, what can Square Enix do to bring that same level of engagement for healers? Will they be willing to do a Cataclysm level overhaul to healing in FFXIV? Because that would be what it would take to make healing fun for the veteran healers.

No, you're definitely missing mine. Sure, good players are going to more often not stand in the bad. But take pretty much most other multiplayer games with healers where they pump out enough unavoidable damage to the point where FF14 healers would be causing wipe after wipe if they only tried to heal with a single oGCD.

In FF14, healers that play with good players and are good players themselves are rewarded with... nothing. They get to spam 1 some more. They are the only jobs actively punished for playing well. Tanks have it kinda bad too, but for healers it's so much more exacerbated.

I've said it before - FF14 healing doesn't give, at least to me, the sense of satisfaction you get from other games. As you and your fellow players get better at the game, you eventually don't finish a tough fight and think "phew, I managed to keep the party up with my healing" and instead think "phew everyone played DDR correctly". When your success as a role is tied more to whether or not everyone played DDR correctly and not whether or not you actually used your kit properly, *that is a problem*.

WoW mythic dungeons are such a wonderful example - the content actively gets harder, the healers are actually constantly challenged, that resto shaman isn't sitting there casting lightning bolt for 80% of the dungeon, he's using the entire kit that was designed for him.

As Renathras said above, it's a flaw with the game's encounter design.

Telling someone to "play with bads" as a means of getting satisfaction from the role is... well, BAD.

EDIT: now that I'm thinking about this, I realize I think Guild Wars 1 healing was probably the most fun healing I've ever had. Considering the creativity you had with putting together builds and the lack of actual tanks and an AI that actively hunted down vulnerable targets... gosh dang that was a fun time. Let's go healer necromancer!

[Absurdity]

EDIT: now that I'm thinking about this, I realize I think Guild Wars 1 healing was probably the most fun healing I've ever had. Considering the creativity you had with putting together builds and the lack of actual tanks and an AI that actively hunted down vulnerable targets... gosh dang that was a fun time. Let's go healer necromancer!

Even GW2 does a better job than XIV, it focuses on healers providing party support instead of just raw healing. You buff their damage mitigation, crit rate, attack power and speed, cooldown reduction and probably more that I forgot about, all requiring you to constantly cycle through different abilities to keep those buffs rolling (some of them even being tied to your damage abilities), and then when people actually take damage for once you still have your healing.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Even GW2 does a better job than XIV, it focuses on healers providing party support instead of just raw healing. You buff their damage mitigation, crit rate, attack power and speed, cooldown reduction and probably more that I forgot about, all requiring you to constantly cycle through different abilities to keep those buffs rolling (some of them even being tied to your damage abilities), and then when people actually take damage for once you still have your healing.

I've never played GW2 but you just described what I'm advocating for. It would be much more engaging than the current model.

My big concern about 7.0 is nothing I have read from Square Enix indicates they understand the issues players are having with how healers are handled in FFXIV. Heck, I'm not even sure if they understand there is an issue at all.

[Zebraoracle]

I've never played GW2 but you just described what I'm advocating for. It would be much more engaging than the current model.

My big concern about 7.0 is nothing I have read from Square Enix indicates they understand the issues players are having with how healers are handled in FFXIV. Heck, I'm not even sure if they understand there is an issue at all.

I honestly do not believe they have any inkling of an idea that there's an issue. Until they decide to move away from the freaking awful 2 minute burst meta, they will never see that there's a problem.

[Raikai]

When we'll get to know something about possible (either small or big) healer changes? As well as the awaited AST rework?

Last JP Fanfest next year maybe?

[Nizzi]

When we'll get to know something about possible (either small or big) healer changes? As well as the awaited AST rework?

Last JP Fanfest next year maybe?

I can safely say there's little chance they'll talk about healers much at all until the 7.0 job changes live letter and when the tooltips are released for each job, those are likely going to just be your stock Glare/Broil/Dosis/Malefic animation change with 10 potency added along with 1-2 oGCD heals.

[LukaRoselia]

Hard agree. I've practically quit the game because of how boring healers are now. I only login to reset my house timer.

[Eisi]

Unfortunately, Yoshi P and the Devs are aware of the opposed arguments. Both the "more damage buttons" and the "more healing requirement" ones. So, too, are they likely aware of the "leave things alone" arguments.

Yes, but those arguments are not contradicting each other.

The first one, more damage buttons is the argument in favor of casual healers, those who play content with low incoming damage, solo story missions, FATEs and the like. Healers should be fun regardless of the difficulty level of the content they engage in and even outside of parties. A lot of new healers are not comfortable with healing large amounts of incoming damage (aka having a lot of responsibility for the team) and modern MMOs want to make the game fun for casuals as well just in general. Healers shouldn't be the "elite" jobs who only start being fun in difficult group content.

The second one is in favor of more pro healers who want to have more responsibility for other people and feel generally comfortable enough to heal more difficult content, which is also very valid.

I think those two can easily be combined and aren't really at odds. MMOs need both types of player. The "keep things as they are" position I find not to be healthy for the game. It means keeping healing requirements low in all content, aka have healers be effectively dps with a few healing opportunities even in hardcore content, yet keeping the dps kit of what is jobs effectively engaging in dpsing all the time frustratingly boring.

Also healing and dpsing shouldn't be seen as at odds. Players who want to gcd heal without losing out on dps for example should be taken seriously. I think there's probably nothing weirder than healers having to be forced to use healing spells by sheer incoming damage because in any other case than players literally dying it would be suboptimal play. I think that's a ridiculous design decision.