Healers need an overhaul

[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.