Healers need an overhaul

[BaconBits]

So, you have an opinion that you're trying to masquerade as a fact, people are telling you that it's an opinion and one they don't share, you've been banging your head against this wall for three expansions now, and you're still thinking it's everyone else that is the issue?

Striker44 moment.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Why can’t people think of a better ‘gotcha’ moment… but anyway…

All I'm seeing in this thread are people taking the "111111111" comment far too literally to the point where I question both their reading comprehension and their level of maturity.

Can we be anymore surprised? Poke their argument with a little bit of logic & it’ll crumble right away; it’s just the easiest response to deflect the grievances.

[Deceptus]

Why can’t people think of a better ‘gotcha’ moment… but anyway…



Can we be anymore surprised? Poke their argument with a little bit of logic & it’ll crumble right away; it’s just the easiest response to deflect the grievances.

It's also a pretty iron clad argument because no other job / role in the game suffers from that utter dumpster fire of a playstyle.

No other job gets objectively worse gameplay the better they personally play.

[Merrigan]

So, you have an opinion that you're trying to masquerade as a fact, people are telling you that it's an opinion and one they don't share, you've been banging your head against this wall for three expansions now, and you're still thinking it's everyone else that is the issue?

This is a fact. Not an opinion.

Take any non-HL fight (savage or ultimate... And again, some healers must be bored in savage); a player who is out of the trial phase of the game, and doesn't play healer once every three months; and a group where no one is doing huge shit, and you'll find yourself spamming 1 button for the majority of the fight.

The question is: how can you argue that this isn't a problem? When healers in this game are intended to be more like hybrids than pure healers? That battles are organized, for us, into "heal windows" and "dps windows"? Which means that literally half of our gameplay is ignored?

And again, I'm only focusing on the most obvious problem. Not on the healing itself, which also suffers from overly repetitive spells, and a lack of personality that becomes glaringly obvious. Nor do we talk about the mana, which is becoming... Useless, really. I find that the astro, in particular, hardly needs to check its mana anymore.

[HyperiusUltima]

And again, I'm only focusing on the most obvious problem. Not on the healing itself, which also suffers from overly repetitive spells, and a lack of personality that becomes glaringly obvious. Nor do we talk about the mana, which is becoming... Useless, really. I find that the astro, in particular, hardly needs to check its mana anymore.

The healing itself is also a large part of the problem. Why is it we have to go to frickin' Savage or Ultimate for our enjoyment in being able to heal? Why can't we actually have that enjoyment outside of it? Essentially every healer who doesn't DPS sits around with their ass on their hands while waiting what seems to be an eternity to heal something because the other players in your group are taking so little damage and healing themselves, even from large pulls! For reference, look at current endgame dungeons. They do not require a Healer to clear. I've seen it and done it myself. You break this trinity that you want to enforce SE if jobs can self-sustain to an extent on their own that Healers aren't needed. This has been the case since P1S and P2S as well, but an all Tank run this tier hasn't happened yet from my knowledge possibly because of the DPS and healing checks.

On the side, AST hasn't had to worry about Mana since they added MP to Cards for the most part; but with Astrodyne in the mix as a personal set of buffs they practically have two versions of Lucent Dreaming for infinite MP. I can see why they use MP as a limiter though rather than useless as you say. I generally think the Piety stat is rather useless and they should not force Piety on us for it. They should instead make a baseline MP regen for the 10k we get and let it be that.

[Deceptus]

"Existential crisis"? SMH man.

Look, I can understand that for many healers, it is currently in a state that makes it difficult to enjoy. But when terms like this is just thrown out there, it becomes very easy to see that the problem is not just with healer design. It's also with the healers themselves.

I can't and won't try to speak for things on a savage level. I can only speak as a player who has used all four healers up to Barb EX, and what they are going through isn't an existential crisis.

It becomes an existential crisis for the role when decent / good players actively aren't bringing healers to fights.

The first two EXs of Endwalker were done without healers at all when they were current, and single healing EX content is common.

Savage has been completed without healers.
Ultimates were completed without healers.

No other role is that disposable. So yes, it literally is an existential crisis for the entire role.

As usual, I default to if you want more DPS options, play a DPS job.

Great, lets have Tanks dumbed down to a single main Aggro generating skill, a 30 second DoT, a single AoE, and 10 mitigations or so that they don't really need. Can't have tanks be complex, tank anxiety is real.

Oh wait, the tanks would riot.

"If you want DPS options, then Play a DPS" is not a reasonable critique or response because it's not applied evenly or fairly across the roles. There is a blatant double standard and has been for years.

[Semirhage]

So, you have an opinion that you're trying to masquerade as a fact, people are telling you that it's an opinion and one they don't share, you've been banging your head against this wall for three expansions now, and you're still thinking it's everyone else that is the issue?

Yeah, FF14's healers are sooooooo well designed. Peak gameplay. 1111111111111111111. So fun. How could I have missed it.

1111111111111111 is bad game design.

[OdinelStarrei]

I don't understand, do people seriously not grasp why people are complaining? Or are they being deliberately contrarian?

Even when you completely ignore the complete lack of care healers have had, you guys are also acting being pretty damn revisionist. There was a time where this game DID have engaging healing kits, and engaging tank kits. That was a reality a lot of people are familiar with, and SE is too, considering how many times they have to backtrack things like Energy Drain, lilies and AST in general. Those times were not "the epitome of good class design", but the solution was not to completely trash the entire role because of the NATURALLY higher skill floor. Every single time someone comes in here and is like "Uhh, healing is fine actually!!!" you get the most insipid defenses.

There could have been a reality where WHM was fixed from the SB issues, and the rest of the healers didn't have all their direct offensive options nerfed down to AST levels with none of the associated CPM or support focus to compensate. Aero III existed. Miasma II existed.

You could write paragraph after paragraph after essay after log analysis after video analysis of the myriad of issues we're stuck with, but it really boils down to one simple truth.

Like everywhere else, instead of trying to placate both the less-skilled and more-skilled players of the healer role by having a reasonable skill floor and a reasonable skill ceiling for improvement if desired, they FORCED the skill ceiling down, so that if you actually want to push yourself in any way, you are limited by your job kit.

It isn't a matter of "iF yOu wAnt To DpS, pLaY a DpS!!!!" Man, until recently, it wasn't uncommon for healers to do MORE damage while having more to do with their multiple dots and healing kits than tanks! Who had/have ACTUAL(if really dumbed down) rotations and sometimes, even responsibilities that are not DPS related! Kinda debatable to be honest though, things are pretty bad across the board.

Expansions are supposed to expand on a game. All that Square Enix has been doing to healing and combat is remove things people like, and add nothing of substance in their place. They don't explain why they are doing this, outside of "trying to close the gap between players." Remember this???



Of course they are complaining. They are not rewarded or even acknowledged for their dedication and investment. If anything, they're actively scorned. Even if you aren't invested in the healing role, or in content that isn't completely braindead, it doesn't change the fact that the role refuses to return to it's roots, continues to devolve as time goes by, and has no one on the development team who is acting as an advocate for the concerns of the established healer players. Like, I don't know why healing isn't allowed to be fun outside of either the initial progression of the encounter, or when your team has the collective braincell of a plankton. Bad faith all around. But if you get rid of all the old healers, you might have brand-new healers who don't have the knowledge the role used to be really engaging, until they run into the same non-existent skill ceiling regardless of the content they run, and get infected with the same hopeless malaise everyone else who cares about job design has now. "Existential-crisis"? I'd say that's an understatement if anything. It's a slow heat death, where every bright spark of creativity and meaningful gameplay expression in the job kits are snuffed out by Square Enix. It is inevitable, for everyone, regardless of how hard we fight or in spite of any small win we get where SE tearfully and regretfully gives us an inch with a "difficult to prog" raid tier after raking us over the coals for several miles.

Don't worry, you have me for that. I don't feel bad about it. Because I feel like at this point I've seen every single angle on the Sylphie attack vector. I'm beyond over it and uninterested in a "good faith discussion" about it. Because there really isn't common ground. You see, every discussion in this vein starts seemingly neutral. I want X, they want Y, there's a vague attempt to describe a world where X and Y have their time in the sun. But push them on it even a little bit and they start stamping their feet and revealing what they actually want: not X. They don't want Y. They want -not X-. Suggest a skill ceiling and the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins.

These people don't want low skill floors. They want nonexistent skill ceilings. They don't want accessible content, not really. What they want is healing to be an easy path to free stuff. Paying attention to your job's resources is bad. Even the existence of a suboptimal-but-still-present GlareMedica2 rotation that could satisfy the zero interactivity isn't enough. They want the lazy no-thought gameplay to be the optimal gameplay. They don't want to climb the mountain before them. They want to bulldoze it down, walk into the rubble, and declare they're at the peak now. They want an easy job that they can be told they're masters of by dint of unlocking the job stone.

Prod literally any Sylphie who claims they sympathize with the desire for more complex gameplay and that's the tantrum you're going to get. Every single time.

Truth time. This is how I feel. I guess I am a slyphie...

It's inevitable. We've already lost. If you're at, close to, or even trying to reach the skill ceiling, you are worthless to Square Enix.

[Lubu_Mykono]

if you're not happy go play healer in ESO, WOW, GW2, New World, Bard/pally in Lost Ark, Overwatch even.
So many options,

[Semirhage]

if you're not happy go play healer in ESO, WOW, GW2, New World, Bard/pally in Lost Ark, Overwatch even.
So many options,

See? Doesn't matter what you say. The Sylphie crew is pleased with stupidly designed healers. There are no productive discussions to be had with them. Wanting good game design or complexity is the opposite of what they want. Spamming Glare good. Using brain bad. "Go away, we like dancing around and not contributing while still getting rewarded for it." You'll get the same tune out of them no matter what you input.