How to easily have healers dps engaged ( yet another thread)

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It also removed energy drains function of being a refund to using ruin 2 to generate weave space for fairy heals and turned it into a generic damage button that consumes healing resources since clipping ED into broil casts was a DPS loss but you didn’t get enough biolysis refreshes to spend every aetherflow on ED before you refreshed ED

It’s why to me WHM feels worse in 6.x, sure the misery changes actually make it a better healer but having a healer who’s primary healing is lossless GCD healing with few oGCD’s but also a weave spot in every glare and a cast animation obviously designed for 2.5 second casts just makes the class feel disjointed and weird to me, sure clip mage had its own problems but having lily’s be integral to weave space generation you attempted to pair with movement times rather than just fancy 2 minute burst damage dumps and downtime spenders really made it feel like WHM had an identity around its turrety cast style that felt good to fully optimise

Truly!

Adding to the WHM sentiment, it felt worse to me because the 1.5s really highlights just how bland and barren their kits are outside Lilies. Like, yeah, I have all these extra mobility and weaving spaces but for what? They have the least amount of weaving amongst all healers, they do not necessarily need it for this purpose specifically. Compounded with the lossy lilies in earlier, EW inception, it devalues the entire system so much even more WHM became reluctant to touch it until SE finally corrected the values... something that they could've done long ago.

SCH didn't felt as bad because they do have $h!tton of oGCDs to play with, but I'm still of the opinion that they should've access additional instant cast DoTs to incorporate more use of their oGCDs rather than enforcing "AST treatment" and call it a day. Or at the very least have Ruin II deal the same amount of damage as Broil IV but at higher MP cost (I think I read somewhere it used to be that way?). The asset is in the game, it's free to grab.

[Supersnow845]

Truly!

Adding to the WHM sentiment, it felt worse to me because the 1.5s really highlights just how bland and barren their kits are outside Lilies. Like, yeah, I have all these extra mobility and weaving spaces but for what? They have the least amount of weaving amongst all healers, they do not necessarily need it for this purpose specifically. Compounded with the lossy lilies in earlier, EW inception, it devalues the entire system so much even more WHM became reluctant to touch it until SE finally corrected the values... something that they could've done long ago.

SCH didn't felt as bad because they do have $h!tton of oGCDs to play with, but I'm still of the opinion that they should've access additional instant cast DoTs to incorporate more use of their oGCDs rather than enforcing "AST treatment" and call it a day. Or at the very least have Ruin II deal the same amount of damage as Broil IV but at higher MP cost (I think I read somewhere it used to be that way?). The asset is in the game, it's free to grab.

Ruin 2 and 1 used to do the same damage but 2 cost more MP (if I remember correctly this was in a time before broil became the direct upgrade of ruin, broil always had the highest potency and MP cost) though back in that time you had so few oGCD’s and so many refreshes of instant DOT’s that ruin 2 was still rarely used, I do agree using a healing resource to generate 1 weave slot is costly when SCH has so many oGCD’s (especially when summon seraph and consolation are two seperate weaves) but the system did at least feel semi coherent

Now all the healers with the 1.5 second like you say just show how empty they are

[Azuri]

This, I will dignify with no further response other than pointing out it's a TOS violation. Good job, "lad". (I bet you think pressing oGCDs is "nothing" too, as if the buttons magically push themselves...)

You are aware they are called off-GCDs because you are supposed to use them between GCDs, not instead of them?

Like, Renathras, you come here arguing how skilled healers are wrong about healing while your personal level of play is abysmal. There is nothing wrong with being bad at the game, but if you want to be having arguments, stop dismissing people for saying they only press one button. You are not managing even that.

And learn to be concise. It's really an important skill when you are trying to share ideas.

[Renathras]

You are aware they are called off-GCDs because you are supposed to use them between GCDs, not instead of them?

Like, Renathras, you come here arguing how skilled healers are wrong about healing while your personal level of play is abysmal. There is nothing wrong with being bad at the game, but if you want to be having arguments, stop dismissing people for saying they only press one button. You are not managing even that.

And learn to be concise. It's really an important skill when you are trying to share ideas.

Okay, I'll give this a bit:

1) Yes, I weave them. The problem is when I need a bunch at once because a lot of people are making mistakes. You may have a 99 parsing team of Statics, I do not. My content is PUGs and DF. Last night I had an E8 I (happily, because that's just the kind of person I am) dragged the party through. I had to hardcast several raises, even Cure 2s because all my oGCDs were on CD. My "abysmal" play is clearing content with players that are probably generally gray parsers.

2) You say my play is "abysmal", but I'm consistently parsing Green and Blue, which is "average". "average" is not "abysmal", it's average.

3) "average" is also not "bad at the game", it's "average at the game".

4) I'm "not managing even that" because I'm not even arguing that - I'm arguing no one is pressing "only" "one button". Even people that are at high levels of play aren't, but the game also cannot be balanced nor designed only around high levels of play.

5) If anything, my opinion should carry more weight - statistically, I'm an average player, and generally speaking, you want to design games around average players, not 1% of the player base. So, if anything, you should be listening to me more, not less, based on your critique. Even if you want to argue - WRONGLY - that I'm "bad" and "abysmal" instead of average, again, a large portion of this game's community are what YOU would call "bad" and "abysmal", meaning the game should be balanced around their perceptions and playstyles.

6) I was quite concise in my reply to you. But brevity isn't good when it leads to misunderstanding and confusion. Also note there's a somewhat tight post limit, so having to combine posts is necessary (especially if discussing things with lots of people), though I do need to look up those hide tags again...

EDIT:

You are literally threatening me here. Thats an implicit threat.

You literally broke TOS to attack me. And no, that's not "literally" threatening NOR an "implicit" threat. The only "threat" is that if you did it more I might report you or mouth off at you, which is a lot less toxic than what you're doing.

Like, maybe don't threaten people

Good thing I didn't threaten anyone then, isn't it? I get you REALLY want to paint yourself the victim here, but considering you attacked me first, your attacks have been far more personal and STARTED with personal attacks, and you even violated TOS to attack me, you clearly aren't the victim in this paring.

if you want others to take your whole "I want to support others"-Attitude seriously and not consider you toxic and unhinged?

I'm not the one going on toxic and unhinged rants against people. Personally, I prefer talking about the topic and the facts, and have engaged with people doing so in-kind. I don't even like making this kind of post, but you just won't STOP. I'm also not the one going out of the forum to find things to attack people for. And my attitude is serious. If you aren't taking it seriously, that's on you. Honestly, I've seriously considered just ignoring your posts, but you keep poking at me because I guess you enjoy being an online abuser - as that is typical online abuser/bully behavior - and I haven't quite brought myself to the point of just sighing and ignoring you yet.

Having played multiple MMOs my whole life, the only reason to like FF14s healers really is either enjoying the idea of dpsing while healing because FF14 made it mainstream before WoW and still has a higher DPS focus than WoW, the superficial animations without regard for gameplay or never having played any MMO before and having no point of comparison what proper healer gameplay looks like. I mean, again, look at WoW. Can you make up any explanation how FF14s healer design is not objectively shit compared to what its biggest competitor came up with in terms of their healer classes, healing styles and healing gameplay?

False Dichotomy - logical fallacy. There are other reasons people would like FFXIV's healers than just the ones you mentioned.

THAT SAID:

As I said in my other reply, I do like WoW's healer design. I'm not sure how well that would work in FFXIV because FFXIV has an oGCD and movement heavy game (a lot of WoW encounters - at least back when I played it - had long periods where casters/healers could stand still and turret; FFXIV encounters do not), and quite a few of its healers are designed around doing little to no DPS in raids. The raids are also balanced around having most every healer present, or at least several of them. 25 mans are balanced around having something like 4-7 healers, FFXIV's are balanced around having 2. If the average raid in FFXIV had 3-5 healers, it would probably also open up that design space quite a bit.

I do agree it would be neat for there to be more variance, which is why I've argued for more variance between the healer gameplay styles and functions.

.

Daily thread limit: Hence why I have to combine posts...

You actually just reinforced my point. 70% GCD uptime is a guaranteed grey for a DPS. But for healers not rolling GCD for a third of the fight is somehow average. The role has been destroyed and simplified to the point where it's given over to the weakest players to participate in savage. And this decision rightfully brought ire of those who enjoy having a skill ceiling and requirment to have something more than a pulse to play.

And yeah, catering to your ilk is what makes developers the most money... You know what also leads to most money? FIFA Ultimate Team.

Okay, yeah, I'm just...not going to.

Moving on to people that actually want to have a good faith discussion and not gaslight...

[Renathras]

We have to also consider, a great portion of new Players also comes from World of Warcraft and I can't see many of them staying engaged with the healer design of this game in the long run, compared to what they knew. WoW Healers are much more diverse and complex in terms of their different playstyles than they were at any point in FF14. Somebody who played Discipline Priest in Wow and jumps to Sage in FF14 because its advertised as similar will probably have a rough awakening after the first honeymoon phase. And that isn't really a process that only affects veteran.

I somewhat agree with this. It's long been amazing to me that WoW had such differences between their healers with them still being relatively well balanced and viable outside of some weirdness here and there (I remember in Vanilla/BC when Disc was "the leveling spec" for Priests until they could respect to unlock Shadow Form because it increased wand damage -and yes, you read that right. Mage was like that with Arcane, and there was even a meme in a machina video at the time, and I quote, "I'm gonna...WAND you to death!!!"). They all feel different, but generally good.

I think part of that is due to the raid size, though. When the game is tuned to encounters where you have 4-7 healers (and the number can be kinda variable based on party, team, encounter, etc) AND where players can easily swap specs (so healers can quickly swap over and DPS or Tank on fights then swap to Healer on the fights they heal), where it can be assumed you have all of them at the table together in most encounters, it's probably easier to balance than if you have only 2 and you have to balance based on (most) combinations of the two.

Though I really do agree that it would be nice to get more diversity between the Healers. There's no reason they should all have the identical "rotations" they do today.

EDIT:

Honestly I think it's a bit unfair to completely discard the opinions of the veteran players who truly have a passion for this game to have played it and engaged with the community for years in favour of newer players who have no real "loyalty" to the game or community and might leave once another shiny new MMO comes out. FFXIV doesn't have new players because of current healer design, it has it in spite of it. We will lose these new players very quickly if jobs are continually homogenised and sterilised.

Good thing...I'm not doing that, then?

I didn't say to "completely discard" them. I'm saying you have to weigh them against others. For example, my main in SB _WAS_ SCH. Want to know the two things I hated about SB SCH?

1) DoTs - because I hate DoTs in general as a gameplay mechanic.
2) Having to macro Eos.

In ShB, they removed the latter and MORE OR LESS removed the former. So not every veteran agreed with the concensus position. Moreover - and this was my point - many people warmed to it after playing it a bunch (especially later in ShB - 5.3 and on) and many new healers or people that newly picked up SCH liked it as well. But people are often very passionate about changes, even if after living with them for a while, once those emotions die down, they reevaluate if their complaints were valid or if they were emotional responses. That was the point I was making.

I'm not saying discard their opinions, I'm saying the dated polling/survey is likely not reflective of the current situation AND likely captured a lot of emotion/passions of the time.

I also contend, to the last point, that a lot of people DO like FFXIV's healer design. I personally believe it can be improved on, but it appeals to a lot of people, including new players.

[Azuri]

Okay, I'll give this a bit:

1) Yes, I weave them. The problem is when I need a bunch at once because a lot of people are making mistakes. You may have a 99 parsing team of Statics, I do not. My content is PUGs and DF. Last night I had an E8 I (happily, because that's just the kind of person I am) dragged the party through. I had to hardcast several raises, even Cure 2s because all my oGCDs were on CD. My "abysmal" play is clearing content with players that are probably generally gray parsers.

2) You say my play is "abysmal", but I'm consistently parsing Green and Blue, which is "average". "average" is not "abysmal", it's average.

3) "average" is also not "bad at the game", it's "average at the game".

4) I'm "not managing even that" because I'm not even arguing that - I'm arguing no one is pressing "only" "one button". Even people that are at high levels of play aren't, but the game also cannot be balanced nor designed only around high levels of play.

5) If anything, my opinion should carry more weight - statistically, I'm an average player, and generally speaking, you want to design games around average players, not 1% of the player base. So, if anything, you should be listening to me more, not less, based on your critique. Even if you want to argue - WRONGLY - that I'm "bad" and "abysmal" instead of average, again, a large portion of this game's community are what YOU would call "bad" and "abysmal", meaning the game should be balanced around their perceptions and playstyles.

6) I was quite concise in my reply to you. But brevity isn't good when it leads to misunderstanding and confusion.

You actually just reinforced my point. 70% GCD uptime is a guaranteed grey for a DPS. But for healers not rolling GCD for a third of the fight is somehow average. The role has been destroyed and simplified to the point where it's given over to the weakest players to participate in savage. And this decision rightfully brought ire of those who enjoy having a skill ceiling and requirment to have something more than a pulse to play.

And yeah, catering to your ilk is what makes developers the most money... You know what also leads to most money? FIFA Ultimate Team.

[T-Owl]

I somewhat agree with this. It's long been amazing to me that WoW had such differences between their healers with them still being relatively well balanced and viable outside of some weirdness here and there (I remember in Vanilla/BC when Disc was "the leveling spec" for Priests until they could respect to unlock Shadow Form because it increased wand damage -and yes, you read that right. Mage was like that with Arcane, and there was even a meme in a machina video at the time, and I quote, "I'm gonna...WAND you to death!!!"). They all feel different, but generally good.

I think part of that is due to the raid size, though. When the game is tuned to encounters where you have 4-7 healers (and the number can be kinda variable based on party, team, encounter, etc) AND where players can easily swap specs (so healers can quickly swap over and DPS or Tank on fights then swap to Healer on the fights they heal), where it can be assumed you have all of them at the table together in most encounters, it's probably easier to balance than if you have only 2 and you have to balance based on (most) combinations of the two.

Though I really do agree that it would be nice to get more diversity between the Healers. There's no reason they should all have the identical "rotations" they do today.

As we agree on one thing, I think one important difference to be pointed out is just how healing works technically. WoW always had a pretty good makro system that had to be reigned down quite alot in its past actually and was always open for addons, which it will occassionally adapt, which lead to mouse over healing becoming pretty much the norm for WoW. It should be a standart feature. Having to regularily switch targets manually is just not comfortable and the shorter gcd makes healing actually more flexible. Then there is stuff like Damage profiles, damage is far more frequent but individually usually smaller in WoW, which makes regen healing more valuable because it serves the purpose of overall smoothing out the parties health bars. And in modern WoW, healing is really a maintanance and management game, one important aspect of WoW Healing is maintaining your healing tools on the party, with healer dps, often synergizing with the way Healers heal or being enabled by their healing style.

FF14 healing is not only extremely streamlined because differences in healing toolkit aren't that distinct, its also extremely clunky. Not to forget that it is counter intuitive. While Sage can teach some basic, especially White Mage by its design teaches inefficent, bad healing. And by virtue of being the only level 1 healer job and being the most iconic FF healer, this will most likely affect most beginner healers. Its even worse since FF14 lacks any dedicated skill system or anything like that, so there isn't even that to encourage new players to look into outside ressources.

[Conchoidal]

Personally, I think DoTs are very good design for healers (since it allows them to still contribute DPS whilst GCD healing), especially for Scholar considering how it played in FFXI and the general class fantasy. They also provided a lot of depth to the class in a way that makes it accessible for casual players and gave more "professional" players more chances to optimise and generally provided an engaging gameplay experience for all different types of players.

I also think it's perfectly fine for some players to feel emotional at a class they enjoyed being changed for no real reason, considering that 3 years later in Endwalker healing requirements are still incredibly low (meaning that the removal of DPS tools was mostly pointless). Good for those players that somehow enjoy spamming broil/glare/dosis/malefic as well new players who play healer, but the current design is completely unsustainable for the longevity of the game.

[Renathras]

As we agree on one thing, I think one important difference to be pointed out is just how healing works technically. WoW always had a pretty good makro system that had to be reigned down quite alot in its past actually and was always open for addons, which it will occassionally adapt, which lead to mouse over healing becoming pretty much the norm for WoW. It should be a standart feature. Having to regularily switch targets manually is just not comfortable and the shorter gcd makes healing actually more flexible. Then there is stuff like Damage profiles, damage is far more frequent but individually usually smaller in WoW, which makes regen healing more valuable because it serves the purpose of overall smoothing out the parties health bars. And in modern WoW, healing is really a maintanance and management game, one important aspect of WoW Healing is maintaining your healing tools on the party, with healer dps, often synergizing with the way Healers heal or being enabled by their healing style.

Yeah, kind of agree with all of that overall. I wonder if part of it is due to WoW straddling the era of "old school" MMOs and modern thempark ones. When WoW came out, it was originally a semi-Everquest clone that was (irony) catered to casual players (what counted as casual at the time - how far we've come, eh?). When it launched, FFXI had been out about a year or so. There were no DF/PF type tools, no Wikis, theorycrafting didn't exist - even the Devs had no idea what was going on; look at the 1.0 talent trees sometime or how tank gear would have agility DPSer stats, etc. It was just a total mess.

And no one cared because it was this immersive world that they got into and had fun with the people they met in it. Sure, most of Molten Snore was braindead easy, a third of the raid DCing due to dial-up sucking and mom having to make a phone call, some classes (particularly Hunter) just auto-attacking entire fights (you think one BUTTON spam is bad, imagine NO button spam!) because bosses had limited debuff spots (so no Windbite type procs allowed, Hunters! Other classes had more important debuffs than you!), and don't forget the only healer that healed was Priest. Paladins were for buffing, Druids were for Innervating the Priest to make sure they didn't run out of mana, and Shaman were for Tremor Totem or something. And note I didn't mention spec - if you were a class with a healing spec, you were in the "healer" slot (for your class), you didn't do damage or tank. That would be absurd. Only Warriors tanked - and also did fantastic damage, go figure.

The whole thing was a mess, but it was a glorious mess when the general playerbase had either never played an MMO before or their "MMO" experience was text based MUDs or Runescape.

EDIT (for space):

But, because of that core, I think it was allowed to grow in different ways that FFXIV's Jobs have not. FFXIV was born once the themepark era had taken hold. While not EXCLUSIVELY, that's probably PARTIALLY the reason 1.0 failed so miserably. It wouldn't have been a great game with all its issues, but if it launched in 2002, it would probably have been a decently successful game because players - frankly - just put up with more back then. 2.0+ was built around being in that new era, and counteracting 1.0's attempt to be an updated FFXI. And this was iterated on in 3.0 and 4.0 to move further from that core and paradigm.

I can't be sure, but I feel like WoW kind of got lucky in that sense and I'm not sure FFXIV can repeat that luck IN THAT WAY because of the different era it exists in. WoW can get away with those legacy systems because it just kind of carried them on, though there were absolutely complaints when they did things like remove spell ranks on Holy Priest (and everyone, but I REMEMBER that one being a big deal) and talent trees, substituting in new systems that supposedly did the same thing (but Cata healing paradigm sucked, even if it was supposed to replace downranking, because the encounter designs didn't reflect that). FFXIV, on the other hand, has tried to get away from 1.0 and arguably 2.0.

Hence why WHM leveling design teaches "bad" healing - because it was designed in ARR, when that was actually GOOD healing because oGCD healing didn't exist as it does today. Level 50 WHM had, what, Benediction? Its other oGCDs were Presence of Mind and Divine Seal, neither of which is an oGCD heal.

SGE does that job of teaching better because it's designed entirely in the new paradigm.

Personally, I think DoTs are very good design for healers (since it allows them to still contribute DPS whilst GCD healing), especially for Scholar considering how it played in FFXI and the general class fantasy. They also provided a lot of depth to the class in a way that makes it accessible for casual players and gave more "professional" players more chances to optimise and generally provided an engaging gameplay experience for all different types of players.

I don't disagree that DoTs can allow healers to do other things while the damage is still going.

I DO disagree that it makes it "accessible for casual players". One of the biggest healer "mistakes" of casual players is their DoTs fall off. All the time. And since a good chunk of their damage is from their DoTs, when the DoTs fall off, that's a pretty big hit. It seems that, in practice, DoT upkeep is actually an advanced skill that casual players aren't good at. So if anything, they're bad, not good, for casual players. The only way to fix that would be to reduce their part of damage contribution, but if their potencies were too low relative to the nuke spells, then there'd be no reason to use them. So it's kind of a Catch 22 there. But at the least, I think it's safe to say DoTs are inaccessible for casual players. DoT uptime and snapshoting is something that experienced and high skilled players excel at, not lower skilled and casual ones.

I also think it's perfectly fine for some players to feel emotional at a class they enjoyed being changed for no real reason, considering that 3 years later in Endwalker healing requirements are still incredibly low (meaning that the removal of DPS tools was mostly pointless). Good for those players that somehow enjoy spamming broil/glare/dosis/malefic as well new players who play healer, but the current design is completely unsustainable for the longevity of the game.

It's understandable, but it's probably wrong to draw assumptions that weight that too heavily and apply them to the role and playerbase as a whole.

As for sustainability and longevity of the game, it's not unsustainable at all. It's not GREAT, though. I think this is another case of hyprbole. FFXIV could keep this healing model for 2,3,6 expansions and be fine. The question should be "Is 'fine' good enough?", and I think the answer is "If it can be better...why not make it better?"

The overstatement of the doom of the game is a problem, but arguing for changes to make it better is something entirely worthwhile, imo.

[Conchoidal]

Yeah, kind of agree with all of that overall.
I DO disagree that it makes it "accessible for casual players". One of the biggest healer "mistakes" of casual players is their DoTs fall off. All the time. And since a good chunk of their damage is from their DoTs, when the DoTs fall off, that's a pretty big hit. It seems that, in practice, DoT upkeep is actually an advanced skill that casual players aren't good at. So if anything, they're bad, not good, for casual players. The only way to fix that would be to reduce their part of damage contribution, but if their potencies were too low relative to the nuke spells, then there'd be no reason to use them. So it's kind of a Catch 22 there. But at the least, I think it's safe to say DoTs are inaccessible for casual players. DoT uptime and snapshoting is something that experienced and high skilled players excel at, not lower skilled and casual ones.
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In Stormblood, healing requirements were higher in all tiers of content and MP economy was a more important factor due to the cost of some spells. Obviously, in an environment where healers are expected to heal with GCDs more it makes sense that less experienced players would prefer to play safe and occasionally lose dot uptime in ensuring the party's survival. Experienced players which understood when specific instances of damage would occur and when they would be expected to heal would work around this so there would be a clear differentiation between "bad" players and "good" players. This environment no longer exists due to the plethora of oGCD heals now available, the removal of meaningful MP economy, and the reduction in healing requirements. There is no real way to "improve" as a healer if at all levels you will be doing the same thing (spamming nuke spell, and reapplying a 30s dot), with the exception of optimising your healing tools (which matters much less due to how many we have, and the aforementioned reduction in healing requirements).

It is not a satisfactory gameplay experience to be forced to spam 1 nuke, 1 dot, and rarely use your healing tools meaningfully. It gets boring incredibly quickly, which is why I don't really think such a design is sustainable (let along for another 2+ expansions), especially if all healers play more or less the same. What's the point in trying a different healer if they usually only have one or two unique gimmicks, and play roughly the same? The MSQ can only do so much to keep players subscribed, and there needs to be a fulfilling gameplay experience with enough depth for players to remain engaged and subscribed.