Healers need an overhaul

[Darthgummibear]

every single ultimate has been solo healed. ucob (widely considered to be the HARDEST ultimate) was done with 8 tanks years ago. UWU would've been cleared without healers years ago but theres one mechanic that needs healer lb3 but has otherwise very little damage.


good for you. for many there isnt enough. should the game not cater to many kinds of players? there are 4 healer jobs. thats a whole lot of design space.


for the 3249023492th time. its not about how much damage healers do, its about what skills there are to press. 2111111111111 isnt fun

While on the one hand I agree with the general sentiment, you can't expect them to overhaul healer design for what is arguably the smallest portion of the playerbase by a large margin.

[QooEr]

While on the one hand I agree with the general sentiment, you can't expect them to overhaul healer design for what is arguably the smallest portion of the playerbase by a large margin.

i think you misunderstand the argument. there us not enough damage to justify such a barebones downtime kit, even all the way to the hardest content. it affects pretty much everyone but the absolutely new to the role.

[Deceptus]

But Sage does have more dps skills, and even if you're still hitting the same button 65% of the time, it feels like there's more depth to it. The experience is what matters, I don't really care about the maths. If you analyse BLM I'm sure you find the top level is just spamming Fire IV 65% of the time right?

Tell me you don't play Sage without telling me you don't play Sage

It doesn't feel different once you understand the job. It's still one button more than 70% of the time in most content.

[ValkyriaCrystalis]

I feel like they\\\\\\'ve made healers easier in the wrong ways. Like for a mid-tier player getting into EX, the ShB changes were good in theory: Make healer DPS more consistent (to hit those incredibly tough DPS checks \s), and provide tons of healing tools so you can\\\\\\'t run out no matter how inefficient you are. But that reasoning doesn\\\\\\'t make sense unless you\\\\\\'re looking at incredibly specific scenarios. Meanwhile, for veteran players it\\\\\\'s just more boring, and for complete newbs it doesn\\\\\\'t help at all.

If the goal was to make healing more approachable for novices, then they should have made it less punishing. For example, currently, the worst experience for a new player is going into a dungeon, dying to a mechanic they\\\\\\'ve never seen before, and causing a wipe because they were the healer and nobody could raise them. Why is the healer role the only one that causes wipes by dying in normal content? One thing I loved about TERA (R.I.P.) was that you got 5 free self-resses when you were new to a dungeon, so you had a chance to learn the bosses\\\\\\' attack patterns without wiping. FFXIV could do something similar, or just allow DPS to use Phoenix downs on the healer (slow, annoying, and potentially limited, but it keeps the run going).

Also, because -avoidable- damage is so high (and it gets worse as people take more vuln stacks), healers are heavily taxed by other people\\\\\\'s mistakes, and that becomes the central role of a healer: be ready for other people to fuck up. Which is not only stressful for newbie healers, but it\\\\\\'s incredibly boring for veteran healers when mistakes don\\\\\\'t happen. What if healing were more consistent? Less punishing for other people\\\\\\'s mistakes, and a bit higher or more frequent at a base level. Like why are wall-to-wall pulls the only time when single-target heals are needed in a good party? Healers basically have to learn 3 different modes of gameplay: DPS, scripted healing, and panic healing. …

Exactly this.
I play dps most of the time and I’m currently levelling sage. And your post clearly states why I’m anxious playing as healer.

Last night I healed the Copied Factory for the 1st time in my life, trying to cast my anxiety over.
My co healer, an AST, was undergeared and died a couple of times on avoidable damages. On the first boss my tank died because I was busy rising the AST, and as you pointed, it’s not a bliss to target a teammate on controller. For the boss starget, it’s easy, you just have to push R3 to “help the ennemy’s target”. But for an ally, you have to scroll down the entire player list.

I struggled a lot with panic healing because there was a very good amount of newbies on my team.

Otherwise, the party damages were incredibly easy to heal ! I would clearly prefer the opposite.

[QooEr]

Tell me you don't play Sage without telling me you don't play Sage

It doesn't feel different once you understand the job. It's still one button more than 70% of the time in most content.

sage feels different not because of the dps but because unlike whm it has like... actual heals to manage. sure, i still fall asleep on the wheel on sage but at least i have icarus and kerachole and cardia swapping to keep your attention.


it doesnt feel the same as whm unless there is absolutely 0 healing needed (meaning it probably only feels the same in like. expert roulette or p1s)

[currentlemon]

While on the one hand I agree with the general sentiment, you can't expect them to overhaul healer design for what is arguably the smallest portion of the playerbase by a large margin.

While this was partially true in ShB in my opinion, I believe the mid-level players and even some low level players are starting to take notice of the issue. Not in Extreme, Savage, and Ultimate fights, but in Dungeons. Given how two Tank Jobs have incredible self-sustain, which is not a bad thing on PAPER, Healers have been healing a LOT less. While dungeon pulls still pose some amount of threat, they can still be done without healers depending on the players' chosen job. Dungeon bosses are even worse as the damage output is just LOW. So far, I was able to clear two dungeon bosses with no issues after the healer died. I remember on the first time I cleared a boss w/ no healer, the WHM player my party had was very upset that I was able to clear the final boss of Ktisis Hyperboreia without him.

Let's not forgot that high level/veteran players have been running dungeons without healers since 5.0.

[Teno]

I fervently hope that they will take inspiration and data from PvP and bring back things like contagion (baked into deployment tactics), oGCD Toxikon, Mesotes, Seraph Strike, the better cards and a few other things that I might be forgetting.

[Ravor]

In other mmorpg (world of warcraft), being a healer truly meant almost only heal, you need to save up your mp mostly for healing, a tank buster required 3 to 4 spell to maximize the tank hp back to at least 50%, very punishing if you stop healing for several second? The tank died and a new mentality will appear, "TANK DYING IS HEALER's FAULT" because tank is so weak that they need healer to even last more than 10 sec, the tank have little self mitigation or self heal, they are useless alone but aside from the tank, any other dps or healer will die in 1 hit by the boss or mobs in dungeon or raid, you know how to know a healer is good or not? The tank will pull the first mob in dungeon/raid and if the healer cant heal the tank to survive that, ussually the party will disband, that makes a new mentality where, we should inspect everyone's equipment lvl, their achivement, etc, it took 1 hour just to make 1 raid of 10/25 player, it was fun at that time, when i was still a college student with lot of time, now? Fully working..... i have no time for that, this is my state of mentality on playing games, i become casual and ff14 is the perfect place for that, but when i was in serious mode, i can get my cerberus mount from delibrium savage which took me 5 weeks of progression

[IDontPetLalas]

Exactly this.
I play dps most of the time and I’m currently levelling sage. And your post clearly states why I’m anxious playing as healer.

Last night I healed the Copied Factory for the 1st time in my life, trying to cast my anxiety over.
My co healer, an AST, was undergeared and died a couple of times on avoidable damages. On the first boss my tank died because I was busy rising the AST, and as you pointed, it’s not a bliss to target a teammate on controller. For the boss starget, it’s easy, you just have to push R3 to “help the ennemy’s target”. But for an ally, you have to scroll down the entire player list.

I struggled a lot with panic healing because there was a very good amount of newbies on my team.

Otherwise, the party damages were incredibly easy to heal ! I would clearly prefer the opposite.

If I take the raid that you were doing, for example, that's a level 80 raid- by that level someone is expected to know their kit.

Now, one point that I absolutely Do agree with is Leonerdo"s point regarding self-resses, this is the only game where I did not have access to that as a healer, although we do have other jobs that can rez, that isn't a guarantee. I would give up a heal in order to have that skill.

i disagree however with the concept of healers needing to learn to 'panic healer' that is something that you do not want to learn, that is something that will get you into a very bad place. You're also not there is fix everyone's mistakes all of the time., you're there time get them through alive, there's a difference.

[Akiudo]

Let's not forgot that high level/veteran players have been running dungeons without healers since 5.0.

to be fair, you can just as well do no tank runs, or no dps runs or god knows what. dungeons in general just aren't hard, "running without x" is more a thing people do for fun rather than because its optimal.

While this was partially true in ShB in my opinion, I believe the mid-level players and even some low level players are starting to take notice of the issue. Not in Extreme, Savage, and Ultimate fights, but in Dungeons. Given how two Tank Jobs have incredible self-sustain, which is not a bad thing, Healers have been healing a LOT less.

on that however i have to wonder, you say its not a bad thing, but really, why isn't it ? people look at the fact that even in a complete random group warrior/paladin can basically solo the dungeon if they take enough time and complain that there isn't enough to do for a healer and put this on the healer design instead of saying "holy **** nerf this absurd tank self sustain". there may be a lot wrong with heals aswell as fight design, not gonna go there, but how about putting tanks having so damn much self healing that a totally average player not overgearing the dungeon can sustain themselves infinitely as faulty tank design instead of a healer problem.