Healers need an overhaul

[HyoMinPark]

I've been a healer main in EVERY mmo I've played for 20ish years now and I have never been able to heal in FFXIV. It's like they are appealing to people who DON'T LIKE to heal. I don't want to dps the whole fight while weaving heals. In fact, it should be the opposite.

Let the HEALER role focus and prioritize HEALING!

The issue with FFXIV healers is the fact that they are quite overpowered and have overly bloated healing toolkits for the majority of content in this game. Most content hits like a wet noodle, and healers have so many industrial-strength bandages for the booboos that the healing-to-damage ratio is even more skewed.

That said, I am not a fan of being a heal bot standing around healing for 90% of content. It would be just as monotonous spamming Medica 100+ times in a fight as it is spamming Glare 100+ times in a fight. I prefer a healthy balance. This game doesn’t have that—it’s 80% or more dealing damage and 20% or less actually healing. A more even distribution would be nice.

It’s unfortunate that the developers have zero plans to actually increase healing requirements, since apparently that would be “too hard”. Can’t say I appreciate the insinuation that players who enjoy the healer role have the intelligence quotient and skill level of a small rock.

[ty_taurus]

The issue with FFXIV healers is the fact that they are quite overpowered and have overly bloated healing toolkits for the majority of content in this game. Most content hits like a wet noodle, and healers have so many industrial-strength bandages for the booboos that the healing-to-damage ratio is even more skewed.

That said, I am not a fan of being a heal bot standing around healing for 90% of content. It would be just as monotonous spamming Medica 100+ times in a fight as it is spamming Glare 100+ times in a fight. I prefer a healthy balance. This game doesn’t have that—it’s 80% or more dealing damage and 20% or less actually healing. A more even distribution would be nice.

It’s unfortunate that the developers have zero plans to actually increase healing requirements, since apparently that would be “too hard”. Can’t say I appreciate the insinuation that players who enjoy the healer role have the intelligence quotient and skill level of a small rock.

That's why I've taken the standpoint that we should have industrial strength suboptimal heals that are cheap, very powerful, and gives SE an out to allow the rest of healing kits to be designed well as, when push comes to shove, the lowest common denominator they want to appeal to can spam the uber heals and keep the party alive even if at the cost of damage output. Meanwhile, the rest of your healing kit is weaker, but about allowing you to maintain damage contributions, including ways that don't involve direct DPS.

At the end of the day, we need to respect the reality that DPS is king, and you can't just change that because it involves changing every fight in the game up to this point. But what you can change is the healer kits to work around that, such as the example I've brought up before of GCD AST cards.

[Punslinger]

I've been a healer main in EVERY mmo I've played for 20ish years now and I have never been able to heal in FFXIV. It's like they are appealing to people who DON'T LIKE to heal. I don't want to dps the whole fight while weaving heals. In fact, it should be the opposite.

Let the HEALER role focus and prioritize HEALING!

This argument again? It must be Thursday.

Yawn. I've refuted this before, so I'll just link it instead of retyping it.

[Pepino]

I've been a healer main in EVERY mmo I've played for 20ish years now and I have never been able to heal in FFXIV. It's like they are appealing to people who DON'T LIKE to heal. I don't want to dps the whole fight while weaving heals. In fact, it should be the opposite.

Let the HEALER role focus and prioritize HEALING!

I’m new to FF14 coming from WoW, it was a huge adjustment, while in WoW you dps when you can it’s not the priority, while in FF14 it seems the opposite, which I personally don’t mind but I just wish if this was the route they taking I wish it was more the spamming Fall Malefic and maintaining combust, make the dps side more interesting.

I’m happy to DPS as a healer, and throw the off ogcd here and there to keep everyone alive, I’ve already gotten use to it just I wish they made the dps side of things more pleasing, personally I’m in love with the new PvP and currently ranked 20th on the Materia DC as AST and wish that the PvP abilities some how make its way into PvE, I feel like healers have to many heals for the content they’ve provided, maybe switch some out for the PvP abilities? AST for example gets double cast, WHM Seraph Strike, SCH mummification.

Or perhaps combo our DPS, make it atleast visually pleasing and satisfying to dpsing inbetween the occasional heal, perhaps when comboing our dps they can then buff our next GCD heal increasing its potency or increase our dps by a flat % reward us.

My issue is seeing Fall Malefic over 100 times becomes a little mind numbing.

Edit; Also wanted to say FF14 is amazing and I’m a fool for not trying this earlier, so many wasted years in WoW

[megamino]

IIRC, there are 3 types of DPS

1. Direct DPS
2. DOT
3. AoE DPS

I think that's enough though, if you want a rotation I suggest making it like GnB 1 button combo I think? I mean, I still want to focus on heal even though there's a DPS... DPS-ing can be quite hard in dungeon especially in W2W scenario where the tank could be just wanking and defending it and didn't use any CD (and mad at me in the process) or even the standard tanking with CD

But it's a dungeon scenario, I haven't played any savage or any ultimate so I put it as dungeon perspective first.

[Naria]

I feel like healers have to many heals for the content they’ve provided, maybe switch some out for the PvP abilities? AST for example gets double cast, WHM Seraph Strike, SCH mummification.

Seraph Strike is something I've wanted in general PvE since it got introduced in Bozja. I'm a bit irked that WHM only got Seraph Strike in PVP while SCH got a version of Lost Impetus for normal play. Bozja has so many great abilties in it while they would have to be changed to work in normal PvE Expedient hopefully won't be the last time they do.

[HyoMinPark]

IIRC, there are 3 types of DPS

1. Direct DPS
2. DOT
3. AoE DPS

I think that's enough though, if you want a rotation I suggest making it like GnB 1 button combo I think? I mean, I still want to focus on heal even though there's a DPS... DPS-ing can be quite hard in dungeon especially in W2W scenario where the tank could be just wanking and defending it and didn't use any CD (and mad at me in the process) or even the standard tanking with CD

But it's a dungeon scenario, I haven't played any savage or any ultimate so I put it as dungeon perspective first.

There aren’t really three types of DPS—it’s more like three types of damage abilities. And the healer design was simply the developers going Ctrl+C > Ctrl+V for each one, changing the names, and then tweaking certain skills just slightly to give the illusion that this healer is different from that healer.

There are only a select few dungeons in this game that actually have any bite to them when it comes to being a healer—and several have been nerfed throughout the years due to gear scaling, job changes, and direct nerfs by the development team. Stone Vigil used to be an excellent dungeon for challenging a healer approaching level 50 in ARR. Even in HW, SB, and ShB it could have a bit of bite to it. It has since been adjusted to remove things like the patrolling Aevis mobs that could surprise an unsuspecting party and up healing requirements. Other notable examples include:

— Aurum Vale: Leeroying into the first room was a death sentence, and still is to some extent, but it certainly doesn’t hit as hard as it used to.
— The Vault: OG The Vault in HW was brutal in terms of the amount of damage tanks took and healers had to heal. It was actually a wonderful dungeon because of that. It got nerfed.
— Bardam’s Mettle: due to Stormblood gear stat scaling, Bardam’s actually ripped unprepared tanks a new one even in i270 or i274 stuff, which was the highest item level gear you could have at level 65. Even tanks that came in synced down from level 70 could get their butts handed to them by the first few trash pulls if they weren’t careful.
— Holminster Switch: the pulls leading up to the first and second bosses are honestly still a bit spicy. The ones leading up to the last boss are boring because they’re forced single pulls.

Other than that, all the other dungeons are snoozefests—especially any dungeon that was once a level-cap dungeon (i.e., 50, 60, 70, 80, and now 90 dungeons). I can heal the level 90 dungeons with oGCDs alone and never have to touch my GCDs on any healer that isn’t a WHM. The only time I have to GCD heal in most dungeons is either I’m level-synced and don’t have my oGCDs, or I have a paper tank. The latter is artificial difficulty; not genuine difficulty of the healer role being challenging.

Savage content has even less healing: to the point that decent healers don’t even touch their GCD heals, and heal primarily with oGCDs. This tier only had a handful of mechanics that were spicy heal checks, and that was primarily during Week 1 when you were at the minimum item level required for the content. With gear, they are trivialized, if not skipped altogether if the group has good damage (e.g., P3S Life’s Agonies). A healer’s most cast ability is their single-target nuke, and by a long shot. For Ultimates, they tend to be more mitigation check than anything else; only TEA has a real heal check in Living Liquid’s and BJ/CC’s phases, and during J-Waves. Perfect Alexander is resident sleeper though in terms of healing. DRU is more mitigation check than anything else, speaking as someone who is currently progging it on a healer. If someone misses a mitigation piece, people just outright die, and you can’t really do anything about that as a healer. You can’t heal one-shots. Which, is okay, I guess—until you consider that Yoshida told healers that, if they wish to be engaged in their role, to go do Ultimate. My engagement comes from the mechanic dance; it doesn’t come from performing my primary role.

The healing requirements in this game aren’t that high. It takes a seriously memey party to really make healers break a sweat—you’re more likely to find those in 24-mans versus any other piece of content. There’s a reason I run some of the old 24-mans routinely on healer: at least I might have a chance to be a healer over a damage dealer. And it’s honestly quite fun to get the clown fiestas. I love Day 1 24-mans for that reason alone.

I really don’t like how, when you have a good party, your job as a healer becomes more monotonous and more boring. You can only really perform your primary role when people are seemingly going out of their way to get hit by stuff or die to stuff. Tanks can suffer from this to an extent, but at least they have a damage rotation they can perform and focus on. DPS are engaging right off the bat in terms of their rotation. I don’t understand why healers have to be the only role treated as if everyone who plays it is a fragile human being that cannot string together more than a single button. Or who would fall apart at any sliver of difficulty.


All that said, healers are primarily dealing damage most of the time they are in combat. It’s simply a fact. At this stage, the developers need to give them an interesting damage toolkit instead of continuously bloating their healing toolkit with more oGCDs that are overkill for 99% of the content in this game. And each healer’s DPS kit should be slightly different from one another. WHM could have your basic 1-2-3 with Misery maybe being a powerful finisher if people want it detached from the healing (or they could leave it as is now, since it is finally DPS neutral). SCH could get its DoTs and Shadowflare back and be a DoT healer with a nuke they spam between DoT management. SGE could have more oGCDs in its kit that further expand on the healing via damage/Kardia job gimmick. Only AST really functions well with the current 1 DoT-1 nuke design due to having its own mini game in the form of the card system (as horribly gutted and clunky as it is).

1-button DPS rotations should be an optional configuration. Not everyone wants to just press a single button constantly—that’s literally the complaint healers have right now. I’d prefer separate skills since they simply feel more engaging to me over 111111111111111, even if said 11111111111111 is actually three different skills. Perhaps it’s because I play on controller and it just feels better to be pressing circle > X > square > left D-pad > weave in right D-pad and triangle > etc. over XXXXXXXXXXXX.

[Shurrikhan]

IIRC, there are 3 types of DPS

1. Direct DPS
2. DOT
3. AoE DPS

These aren't "types of DPS".

To be fair, though, there isn't really any separate DPS "type," only priority or application. Even then, the only cases we really see are "Focus Damage Priority" vs. "Total Damage Priority" and, simultaneously, though not in XIV, "Burst Damage Priority" vs. "Total Damage Priority".

Additional, sometimes useful labels include "Split," "Linear," "Fall-off," and "Funnel" damage in regard to AoE types. ("Split" is essentially ST damage in its total potency, at least before accounting for any additional effects, as the damage is evenly split across all AoE enemies. "Funnel," not seen in XIV, increases damage to a primary target with the number of additional enemies nearby.)


An offensive skill's damage profile (the "shape" of the skill, so to speak) has 4 factors:

• Potency as portion of filler.
• Direct Target-scaling
• Availability
• Potency cost of desync

Note that "Potency as portion of filler" follows rDPS rules. The relative potency bonus applied over Twin Snakes' duration, for instance, would be assigned to Twin Snakes, not each affected ability.

Target scaling refers to the increased total damage over target count. A pure AoE has 'n' target scaling. A 50% falloff AoE has '1 + .5(n-1)' scaling. Etc.

This can be direct (as per the earlier examples) or indirect, such as per the old DoT-Repertoire interactions. The indirect gains tend to be more narrowly applicable (such as often not themselves gaining from target count) and/or more complex.

Availability refers to frequency of available use, be that through average gauge generation towards a gauge spender, the cooldown or recharge time of a hard-CD skill, or the soft-CDs of DoT or buff timers.

Potency cost of desync refers to the contextual cost of performing a given skill early or late.


Fillers, of course, have neither the first nor last quality.

[Pepino]

1-button DPS rotations should be an optional configuration. Not everyone wants to just press a single button constantly—that’s literally the complaint healers have right now. I’d prefer separate skills since they simply feel more engaging to me over 111111111111111, even if said 11111111111111 is actually three different skills. Perhaps it’s because I play on controller and it just feels better to be pressing circle > X > square > left D-pad > weave in right D-pad and triangle > etc. over XXXXXXXXXXXX.

I do like suggestion to configure how you prefer to play, be a huge quality of life for those who prefer that style of play, be just like in PvP, I personally enjoy the PvP style where the buttons combo to the next, draw/play being together aswell. I just personally think SE could do so much more with healers then what we have right now, I’m actually very excited and nervous about this major overhaul coming to AST in 6.2, AST/SCH both being my favourite classes.

I think this AST overhaul is going to be a clear direction on where healers be heading and the future of healers.

But I strongly believe a combo for each healer would def help out, visually pleasing too, that’s what I love about this game, the animations and visuals are 2nd to none, they simply amazing and definitely would bring some more life into healers DPS, like for example WHM, Glare > Radiance > Blinding Light (I’m really bad at making up skill names), completing the combo then grants a DPS % increase/healing Potency increase or MP regeneration. This way we get rewarded for dpsing like every other job currently, new visuals and animations both be aesthetically pleasing bringing life and excitement into the respective healing job.

While yes it’s a Band-Aid fix, but it’s definitely more better then just being a Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis spam bot with the occasional refresh of your DoT.

I’m also hoping SCH steps away from its “Tech” visuals of Art of War, Biolysis and so on and really double down on its Fae abilities and visuals, Sage is the tech based healer, personally I think that takes away the uniqueness and identity of SCH now, but that’s for another post.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, Healers PvP skills I feel should make its way into PvE, I love AST double cast, imagine WHM Seraph Striking into melee to get into range for Holy, SCH Mummification debuffing enemies, it will bring a new uniqueness to each job.

[Maltothoris]

Just moving this back to the front page again. It really is a shame that they are so stubborn really with this sort of design for healers when it's starting to become increasing archaic in that their fight design just never really changes not even after 10 years at this point.