Healers need an overhaul

[Hezhi]

So because parsers and bad players exist healers should be boring forever? Come on man.

The green DPS meme is real, and I hate it. The only change I would ever advocate to the healers are fight make it so that healer DPS is a luxury and not the main function of healer.

I hate to pull this meme comparison but WoW does exactly that and ALL healers in that game still have more than 2 DPS buttons to use lol. There is just no excuse for healers to be this boring.

[Raven2014]

Or maybe people :
- don't only do group content?

I don't think I ever said anything about people doing outside of group content. But if they join a group as a healer, I would expect them to ... heal?

- like to do both DPS and healing - one does not necessarily negate the other.

And did I say they do?

You are saying that there is some e-peen measuring mentality at work that leads to people expecting that they squeeze every last bit of DPS and not healing people.

When an AOE coming up, the party is not full, and you still see Broil/Glare/Melafic going off. Or when you have to burn through your kits healing succession mechanics without any help ... I would like to hear a different explanation if you have one.

i haven't seen anyone asking for healing to "squeeze every last bit of DPS"

And ... that's exactly the problem? Indeed nobody is asking the healers to do that, the content definitely doesn't need the healers to do that. What, you think when tank/DPS or even healing, I prefer the healer to DPS as much as possible over keeping the group alive? In case you missed the point, the healer is doing for the shake of their parse over the group's well being, that's the point.

[Raven2014]

So because parsers and bad players exist healers should be boring forever? Come on man.

Boring to who? I clear savage 4 times a week, and I main healers on all of them. I don't find them "boring". You're mistaken if you think my advocacy has something to do with exciting/boring. I simply don't want the system to change to make a bad mentality worse, that's all. If we can overhaul the mentality of players first, I'm down to overhaul any class or role you want.

Here is a parallel example for you:


Remember the time when tank-stance matter for enmity, give reduction damage taken but also damage down? SE "simplified" it by taking all that away, and I bet part of the reason because there are so much drama about it. I lost count the number of argument/drama both on PF and static around the issue. The fact is ... again, outisde the highest tier of content there is no reason for a tank not permanently have it on, it's better for everyone else in the party. The only problem is it hurts tanks's FFLog ... and thus the ensued drama. There were so many time I sit there on the party watching the argument (is it the DPS not watching their aggro, is it the healers healing too much, is it the tank taking too much damage ...etc...), you know ... the kind of **** show in which ALL problems can be solved by the tanks keeping their stance on more? But hey, no self-respected tank caring about their Log would agree to that. My argument for healer is no different.


FFlog shape the mentality of the community (at least the vocal part of it) far more than people realize, and as such it also greatly affect many of the design choice. You know why I think the current healers are not as exciting as they can be? It's because it's the best compromise SE can come up with, it let people to chase their dream parse and not putting more risk to the party at the same time. Asking healers to have better DPS rotation is like asking SE to bring back the old tank stance, I let you think for yourself what the chance of SE doing that, and why.

You know what, if FFlog just straight up disappeared, I would actually not mind if healer DPS are made more complicated. Because without something like that to promote the parse chasers, I think at least most people will still heal when needed even with an interesting DPS rotation. The current system may not be what the community want, but totally what we deserved to have.

Those people were doing that before when we had DPS rotations and nothing short of removing all DPS skills will change that. Bad players exist in every role of this game, else we wouldn't have Tales from Duty Finder complaining about No Mitigation Tanks, Green DPS Healers, No AoE DPS, etc. all the time. It's not an argument because it's just bad players being bad and will continue being bad regardless of what they're given.

Oh I certainly agree a player can be bad for many reasons. It's not like you don't have bad healers during Coil when healer DPS wasn't really a thing or the FFlog nonsense. The point is, that list of reason is already large enough I don't feel more factor being added to it.

[Hezhi]

Boring to who? I clear savage 4 times a week, and I main healers on all of them. I don't find them "boring". You're mistaken if you think my advocacy has something to do with exciting/boring. I simply don't want the system to change to make a bad mentality worse, that's all.

To who? Excuse me? Have you seen the state of the forums? The place where people go to give feedback? Theres are literal hundreds of pages of healers or former healers detailing why they quit healer or why they find it boring now. Healers being homogenized to hell and back of having a meme garbage 1 1 1 1 rotation has been the punchline of SE's job design direction for years now.
This mentality you're so afraid of can't be designed around, it was there when healers were slightly more complex, it'll still be there if they somehow make it even easier. People will ALWAYS greed. You think it's fine for the game to be designed around a niche parser community?

[Silver-Strider]

I don't think I ever said anything about people doing outside of group content. But if they join a group as a healer, I would expect them to ... heal?



And did I say they do?



When an AOE coming up, the party is not full, and you still see Broil/Glare/Melafic going off. Or when you have to burn through your kits healing succession mechanics without any help ... I would like to hear a different explanation if you have one.




And ... that's exactly the problem? Indeed nobody is asking the healers to do that, the content definitely doesn't need the healers to do that. What, you think when tank/DPS or even healing, I prefer the healer to DPS as much as possible over keeping the group alive? In case you missed the point, the healer is doing for the shake of their parse over the group's well being, that's the point.

Here's the thing though. A lot of content doesn't require healers to heal all that much. Unless the group is terrible to a point of forcing you to carry several people thru it, there is hardly any healing that is realistically needed anymore. The party doesn't NEED to be 100% for most mechanics nowadays. Hell, you can keep people at 60% and more likely than not, they'll still survive the next Raid Wide attack.

Casual content has become so mind numbingly easy that the healer could die at the start of a fight and you could still possibly clear it with just residual healing from the Tanks and liberal applications of any self sustain tools a job currently has access to.

Had a friend go on their SGE to do whatever the dungeon 6.1 added is called. They died on the 2nd and last boss when the boss' were still somewhere in the ballpark of 60-70% Health remaining. The party was a GNB, BLM and myself as a MNK. We killed both bosses while my friend sat outside the arena.

My FC was helping people that have NEVER done a savage raid clear P1S and P2S with just a SGE solo healing.

Ultimate Fights are being cleared with 1 healer while STILL using their 1 DPS spell the overwhelming majority of the time.

Healing in this game has become little more than a bad joke, all because people complain whenever they get a bad healer from time to time but when a Bad Tank or DPS commit war crimes no one bats an eye.

[Raven2014]

To who? Excuse me? Have you seen the state of the forums? The place where people go to give feedback? Theres are literal hundreds of pages of healers or former healers detailing why they quit healer or why they find it boring now.

You mean ... the forum where I feel 90% of people being here are being forced to play at gun point? All it proves is "some" portion have problem with it, is it 10%, 20%, 50%, 70% of current healer, who know? And even among these thread there are still people like me who enjoy the role, I'm not the only one. And in case you haven't worked it out, people come to the forum to complain, the happy people don't have a habit of coming here singing its praise so this citation is meaningless for statistical purpose.

Healers being homogenized to hell and back of having a meme garbage 1 1 1 1 rotation has been the punchline of SE's job design direction for years now.

Read my edit post above about tank stance. To repeat, I don't blame the current state of jobs sorely on SE's fault. That "direction" is a direct result of what happening in the community. Some may have the skill, but many had proven that they do not have the mentality to handle the responsibility.

[Raven2014]

Here's the thing though. A lot of content doesn't require healers to heal all that much.

That's the thing though, it's a problem with the whole design. If healing is already so insignificant in this game, the solution is ... let's make even less of a focus? This sound like the joke of "a solution to the poor is to let's kill all the poor".

I already said I don't oppose to changing healers, what I'm opposed is the way people think it should be fixed. Otherwise, why not just go for something even more extreme? Get rid of the healing role all together, give everyone else two more self-healing. After all, if it's truly most healers already had such a strong distaste for healing, and seem to prefer DPS much more ... that'll work out perfectly fine won't it?

[Silver-Strider]

That's the thing though, it's a problem with the whole design. If healing is already so insignificant in this game, the solution is ... let's make even less of a focus? This sound like the joke of "a solution to the poor is to let's kill all the poor".

I already said I don't oppose to changing healers, what I'm opposed is the way people think it should be fixed. Otherwise, why not just go for something even more extreme? Get rid of the healing role all together, give everyone else two more self-healing. After all, if it's truly most healers already had such a strong distaste for healing, and seem to prefer DPS much more ... that'll work out perfectly fine won't it?

There's already a thread about just removing Healers entirely.

Personally, I don't find DPS roles to be fulfilling to keep me playing long term. Yes, I love playing my MNK periodically but when it comes down to it, I prefer a more support oriented playstyle and Healer used to be that for me. They slowly stripped away the support part of the job over the years to a point it's little more babysitting than actual support now.

[NekoMataMata]

Here's the thing though. A lot of content doesn't require healers to heal all that much. Unless the group is terrible to a point of forcing you to carry several people thru it, there is hardly any healing that is realistically needed anymore. The party doesn't NEED to be 100% for most mechanics nowadays. Hell, you can keep people at 60% and more likely than not, they'll still survive the next Raid Wide attack.

Casual content has become so mind numbingly easy that the healer could die at the start of a fight and you could still possibly clear it with just residual healing from the Tanks and liberal applications of any self sustain tools a job currently has access to.

Had a friend go on their SGE to do whatever the dungeon 6.1 added is called. They died on the 2nd and last boss when the boss' were still somewhere in the ballpark of 60-70% Health remaining. The party was a GNB, BLM and myself as a MNK. We killed both bosses while my friend sat outside the arena.

My FC was helping people that have NEVER done a savage raid clear P1S and P2S with just a SGE solo healing.

Ultimate Fights are being cleared with 1 healer while STILL using their 1 DPS spell the overwhelming majority of the time.

Healing in this game has become little more than a bad joke, all because people complain whenever they get a bad healer from time to time but when a Bad Tank or DPS commit war crimes no one bats an eye.

And so that means that healers need to be changed?

I'm not against healer changes necessarily but... if healers aren't necessary for current content, then surely that's a problem with the content and not the healers, isn't it?

Again, I'm not against healers getting more dps options in order to further diversify what we can do performance wise but at the moment that sounds like a very small bandaid for what seems to be a much larger issue. If healers aren't necessary for current content, and we give healers a full out dps rotation in response to that, then we might as well just turn each healing class into a DPS class instead.

Sure, go ahead and give healers a dps rotation if you really want, but the clear issue right now is that healers don't have enough healing to do in fights unless their team is absolutely screwing up everything. That is clearly the priority.

[Silver-Strider]

And so that means that healers need to be changed?

I'm not against healer changes necessarily but... if healers aren't necessary for current content, then surely that's a problem with the content and not the healers, isn't it?

Again, I'm not against healers getting more dps options in order to further diversify what we can do performance wise but at the moment that sounds like a very small bandaid for what seems to be a much larger issue. If healers aren't necessary for current content, and we give healers a full out dps rotation in response to that, then we might as well just turn each healing class into a DPS class instead.

Sure, go ahead and give healers a dps rotation if you really want, but the clear issue right now is that healers don't have enough healing to do in fights unless their team is absolutely screwing up everything. That is clearly the priority.

The Devs already said they weren't going to make healing harder so there's really nothing left to discuss.