Healers need an overhaul

[Renathras]

This would...

And this is an example of everything that's wrong with this discussion and why we won't get meaningful change: The side of the debate that cannot seriously talk with the other, instead preferring to insult the other side and assume their motivations are laziness or badness instead of that they actually like different things.

No one has a problem with "having something to engage your brain", some don't even mind "outside healing". And not everyone is against a "skill ceiling to reach for".

The issues are they aren't for those things LIKE YOU ARE.

MP management is a skill ceiling to reach for.
Choosing the optimal heal for a situation when it actually matters is a skill ceiling and something to engage your brain with that is INSIDE healing.

But those things don't matter to you, because they aren't non-healing, and you seem to want Healers to be about non-healing actions and optimization.

Moreover, different people like different things. To some people, they don't like damage buttons - but they'd love more buff buttons. That seems to be true of a lot of people, actually. Most people don't even mind a few more damage buttons, even those that don't care for damage dealing, but they don't want ONLY a few more damage buttons, as that doesn't address our main issues of not enough healing being needed by encounters and 1/0 Healer clears. It's certainly not an actual fix. "So you won't be bored" doesn't prevent 0 Healer clears unless the thing you're not bored about is something that can't be replicated without a Healer - that is, healing.

I know you know this, because I've told you before, many times. You prefer arguing against caricature and straw men because they (in your mind) are easy to defeat. But this is why you get nothing. Because you aren't willing to see what other people want, and so you can't offer real compromises because of those blinders.

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.

EDIT:

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.

So much this. WHM has less accessible party mit than BLM. Let that sink in. BLM has Addle on 90 sec where WHM has Temperance on 2 min...and nothing else. (Yes, Temperance is more powerful, but less available...and we're comparing with BLACK MAGE, it shouldn't even be close enough for that to be a relevant "But ackshually..." in the first place!)

AST at least gets some Collective Unconscious and a Neutral Sect AOE shield, but WHM has among the weakest party mitigation in the entire game. Give it Protect/Shell/Wall, for crying out loud! SOMETHING.

This is yet another problem with encounter design - it's shifted away from healing checks (lots of healing needed, WHM's specialty) and into mitigation checks...then given a bunch of mitigation (and healing) to Tanks and DPSers, and taken most of it FROM the Healers in the process. I can understand Tanks having mitigation, but massive healing, too? And DPSers having both? It's a failure of encounter design and Job design. The Healer is who is going to get complained to when people die, so may as well at least give us the lion's share of the mitigation so we can do something about it.

[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.