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

[Supersnow845]

I’m usually a massive fan of discussing healers on the forums but I can’t even follow this thread anymore because there is so many walls of text, can we maybe keep this to like the post limit I’d like to actually be able to follow this thread without doing a third re-read of the simarillion

[Renathras]

I’m usually a massive fan of discussing healers on the forums but I can’t even follow this thread anymore because there is so many walls of text, can we maybe keep this to like the post limit I’d like to actually be able to follow this form without doing a third re-read of the simarillion

Fair enough.

I dunno, from my perspective, I find healing fun and engaging. It's interesting, the fights keep things spicy, I correct for all the crazy PF mistakes, etc etc and find it pretty enjoyable. As a person that also played WHM from 2.3 or so to present and SCH from 2.5 to present (and SGE from 6.0 to present), I find them all unique and fun in their own ways.

I feel WHM today is in the best place it's ever been (at least since ARR), especially contrasted to SB WHM. We traded Aero 2 and Aero 3 for Afflatus Solace, Rapture, and Misery, and the limp noodle glorified Freecure system that the Lilies at the time were (I don't remember, but I THINK it was casting Cure 1 and Cure 2 had a CHANCE at reducing the CD on Assize and Tetra or something like that by 5 seconds? That was just laughably bad), giving WHM a far greater amount of flexibility and interesting gameplay vs SB. SB WHMs were asking for changes like that, and for good reason, since SB WHM kind of sucked as the game shifted from the HW era encounter design towards the ShB to present era ones, which SCH and AST were decently suited for, but WHM was woefully ill suited for. Indeed, the changes were so successful, playing around Lilies and "More blood for the Blood Lily" have become unironically central to WHM's current identity and people love that about it.

SCH, on the other hand, I'm more mixed on. True, I didn't care much for the DoTs, but I didn't HATE SB SCH, and felt it was honestly in a good place, and no one asked for those changes. Sure, we EVENTUALLY (in EW) got the Eos responsiveness addressed, but ghosting still exists. Those were the only things SB SCHs really complained about, and they didn't require a complete rework of their other gameplay systems to get there. It's why I keep saying I would love to see SCH reverted to the SB era overall + Eos responsiveness + Expedience as I think that would be a good Job and please a lot of people, even if I personally wouldn't be one of them.

And I feel SGE is completely poorly implemented. Billed as a Disc Priest that deals damage to heal, it...DOES that, but BARELY. Hence why I've argued for it to have something more akin to RDM's caster rotation. Something more engaging and rewarding and really leverage Kardia healing, have short duration second Kardia and party Kardia to make it where you can try to heal the party through Kardia alone (with some oGCDs for mitigation to make that doable), etc. Really play into THAT instead of the AF/AG system that makes it a SCH clone instead.

EDIT:

I dunno, I think my position is a moderate, compromise one, rooted in reason and a knowledge and understanding of the game's mechanics and history. I feel like the above shouldn't be TOO controversial. Even people that want "moar dots...okay, STOP dots! 50 DKP minus!" on WHM should be able to objectively contrast SB to EW WHM and see that EW WHM is arguably in a better place in terms of its overall kit and mechanics, even if they'd like to add a DoT.

And I can't imagine many people here arguing against me that SB SCH was best SCH, and SB SCH + Expedience and responsive Eos would be amazing to them right about now. Nor can I see many of you arguing AGAINST SGE having a more involved DPS kit and having something that makes it more distinct from SCH and less a SCH clone.

So I at least feel like my position as stated above shouldn't be TOO controversial...

[Rilifane]

I’m usually a massive fan of discussing healers on the forums but I can’t even follow this thread anymore because there is so many walls of text, can we maybe keep this to like the post limit I’d like to actually be able to follow this form without doing a third re-read of the simarillion

I've zoned out of most discussions here for the same reason.
I like discussions, I even enjoy walls of text if they are not filled with fluff that comes across as trying to explain something to a 8yo or simply repeating points.
Qualitity over quantity, more words don't always get the point across better, they often have the opposite effect, people skim over something and miss good points.

And on the topic of stressful gameplay:
Stress itself isn't automatically a bad thing.
Everything that challenges a person in any way is a form of stress because it forces the brain and body to work at a higher level than it would usually do in your day to day life. Sport is pure stress for the body to the point of making you more vulnearable to sicknesses shortly after. It is still highly enjoyable for many people.
Relaxation comes mainly through doing something you enjoy, not necessarily through something slow-paced and so it can even include something that could be considered stressful, like raiding or aiming for good performance. So yes, something being stressful can absolutely be good. Not for everyone, no, but writing it off as something that's always bad isn't true either.

[AmiableApkallu]

That is the official lore: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/whitemage/

Show me where it says "...and are gods of destruction, rending foes with powerful attack magicks"?

Remember, as a White Mage, your soul stone derives from A-Towa-Cant; you don't follow in the traditional Padjali mold:

A-Towa grew to become an accomplished Hearer, but soon grew dissatisfied with the role—he came to realize that to truly protect the Twelveswood he must cleanse the source of impurities beyond the confines of the forest.

Not a "god of destruction", but still, someone who realizes that healing the world sometimes calls for a more active approach.

More broadly, the healer role in Final Fantasy has never been one of pure healing. The White Mage of the original Final Fantasy dealt respectable damage with their hammer. Rosa of FFIV could deal damage against zombies using standard Cure spells and had a special attack ability when wielding a bow and arrow. Yuna of FFX wielded summons of sufficient power that the game could design a dungeon where she was the only party member.

I'm not a fan of rotations as they're typically implemented in this game, but I do think that each of the healer jobs needs a well-defined damage-dealing identity. If this were an old-school console Final Fantasy game, what would be the special menu items be for each job?

[flowerfairy]

snip

You don't have to nitpick every other sentence, just summarize it all up in a paragraph.

I’ll be putting together quotes that I think generalize a section. I'll try to not talk about stuff other people covered

WAR/WHM comparison:
Yes, I did use hyperbole. It gets the point across. No one is complaining when you use pickle anagrams or whatever to simplify the argument.

Yes, Storm's Eye would exist. But IR = PoM would be more like crit weaponskills without unlocked Fell Cleave. Infuriate does not compare to Lucid Dreaming at all. Again, will people really like this?

Healer state:

... Right now, they're able to clear content - content you likely don't WANT them to be able to clear. ...

What content requires ANYONE to be good at pressing damage buttons? Certainly not dungeons and normal trials/raids. That leaves Extreme, Savage, and Ultimate. The stuff that has hard enrages. I guess you’re right - I don’t want someone who doesn’t want to put in effort to clear hard content.

... because gear is gated behind them ...

Also: Ultimates exist. That's the "hard" content in FFXIV. Or supposed to be, anyway.

“Just play ultimate.”
Legend titles and weapons are locked behind the hard content, should that be made easier?
Gear progression does not matter in this game at all for anything other than doing even harder content.

WHM lore:

... Current day WHM's are almost exclusive Padjali ...

We’re not Padjali though, we’re adventurers who get sent to kill monsters and sometimes people. This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to solo kill stuff anyways for the MSQ, so the whole doctor thing doesn’t work. Also, what happens to Sylphie when she only uses healing spells?

Show me where it says "...and are gods of destruction, rending foes with powerful attack magicks"?

You’re using hyperbole here

I don’t want “power attack magicks”, I want spells that actually feel like I’m combining the usage of stone, wind and water. The kit I described had 5 buttons. If we add Aero, Holy, and Misery, it’s 8. Compared to any other DPS, it’s not destructive.

Caster design:
Honestly I don’t understand your point here. Do you also admit that SMN does not do casting well either? What does that have to do with Glarespam?

... Most of the arguments are from people who optimize ...

No. I’m attacking flawed game design. I’m saying Glarespam doesn’t fit ShB and EW’s endgame fight design, and you feel attacked because you enjoy that gameplay for whatever reason. You yourself admitted that this gameplay fits ARR fights better, so I don't understand.

Your picture says your Main Class is Scholar Lv 90, so what's the problem?

Seriously? Since my forum profile says Scholar, that means I don’t have WHM at level 90 and I’m never interested in its aesthetic?

[T-Owl]

Wait, I'm a bit confused here.

The issue is that without the current ogcd healing kit and being more reliant on gcd heals, a majority of in effect halfway interesting healing abilities would be lost and the role itself would become extremely slow to play. Which is okay for one healer, white mage especially would be an ideal candidate for the turret healer who should push big numbers both in dps and healing with an elemental damage rotation akin to Black Mage while others should be afforded more active rotations, both in dps and healing. The issue with the current gcd toolkit, especially the non-cooldown or gauge restricted one, is that it is exceptionally boring. It is bare bones. With regen healers, in terms of single target healing you have one spell that is always the right answer to use while the weaker but less costly spell is always the wrong answer, because it is plainly less efficent. All the spells with more interesting effects are the ogcd ones.

Wow, this is an amazing bit of...I'm not even going to say what it is.

You express constant smugness over healers who care about their dps, when really in most content in this game dps is the only skill expression a healer can have and the biggest contribution they can bring. Being able to heal the content is the skill floor, it is the bare minimum of being able to play the role. And to be honest, I think your talking about elitism and WoWs supposed toxicity all the time, it kinda feels like you can't get over the trauma of being called out once in your time there. My position is not one of elitism but of basic competency. I literally picked up healer during Endwalker fresh after not playing it for years and was immediately capable of playing with pretty high dps uptime and barely having to cast heals, basically reducing it to zero outside of emergency situations during the course of leveling from 70-90. Hell, when I was a sprout I was immediately able to dps fairly often and engage with cleric stance very early on during the first dungeons of the game just after picking up that Healer DPS is expected in this game and finding that pretty cool. And to be honest? Healer DPSing being a thing is pretty much the most unique and stand out thing in this game, because it was already an established norm and common courtesy when I started the game, arround the end of heavensward. It is kind of the games special shtick for healers and the only thing that makes them stand out, especially since both the job stories and their quest heavily lean into the combat abilities of healers.

And to be honest, I feel like story content being so easy that it is impossible to fail is kind of immersion breaking. It would be okay if the WoL would be defined by being just there and special, but they are supposed to be a legendary combatant but the story itself has no casual skill checks for the player to test and proof that.

[ty_taurus]

Healer DPSing being a thing is pretty much the most unique and stand out thing in this game, because it was already an established norm and common courtesy when I started the game, arround the end of heavensward. It is kind of the games special shtick for healers and the only thing that makes them stand out, especially since both the job stories and their quest heavily lean into the combat abilities of healers.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but back during ARR and HW, healing was praised for being such a breath of fresh air in contrast to old WoW healers. I distinctly remember an article stating that SCH took the idea of what a healer is meant to be and revolutionized it, and being so proud that that was my main job. People regularly praised the healers back then for being everything that healing currently isn't. It wasn't perfect, of course. Nothing is nor will ever be perfect, but it had a truly unique feel to it and felt great to play in most ways. Stormblood had its ups and downs, but SCH and AST at least were in great places, and the issues with WHM would've been easy to rectify if the game continued in that direction rather than trying to sterilize the role.

[T-Owl]

“Just play ultimate.”
Legend titles and weapons are locked behind the hard content, should that be made easier?
Gear progression does not matter in this game at all for anything other than doing even harder content.

The just play ultimate argument is kinda the most toxic and gaslighting one in this discussion if you ask me, as it operates under the assumption that the glarespam only affects players elite players and basically tries to frame anyone who cares about laying the job correctly and being engaged, instead of like people admitted her being drawn to the job for being easier and less engaged than other ones, as some hardcore elitist. People start to run into the issue of glarespam as early as being very new to the role and learning about it being prefered by the community if healers dps. In my case, that was as low as Sastasha when I started the game very fresh and I think just by reading the forums out of curiosity learning about this trend. So, when I was a sprout (though naturally, I didn't noticed it being a problem back then because combat isn't particular fun for any class until higher levels). The issue affects players from msq casuals up to ultimate readers.

[ty_taurus]

To follow-up on what I was saying about how healing was praised during ARR, this wasn't the article I remember, but I did find one article on SCH specifically from 2013. This is really just an opinion piece from one game journalist, so certainly take it with a grain of salt, but I just wanted to highlight this specific part that I find hilarious in hindsight:

"I can't speak for White Mages, but I can say that healing at endgame as a Scholar is a blast. With DoTs, off-global cooldown abilities, dodging, and pet management to deal with I am rarely ever bored. I am literally always doing something in dungeons, and that feels amazing.

What's so special about SCH anyway?

Everything!

Okay, well maybe not everything. Physick certainly isn't."

The full article is here. Again, it's just an opinion piece, but it's another pieces of anecdotal information to toss onto the pile of people loving all the things SCH has lost.

[T-Owl]

I mentioned this in the other thread, but back during ARR and HW, healing was praised for being such a breath of fresh air in contrast to old WoW healers. I distinctly remember an article stating that SCH took the idea of what a healer is meant to be and revolutionized it, and being so proud that that was my main job. People regularly praised the healers back then for being everything that healing currently isn't. It wasn't perfect, of course. Nothing is nor will ever be perfect, but it had a truly unique feel to it and felt great to play in most ways. Stormblood had its ups and downs, but SCH and AST at least were in great places, and the issues with WHM would've been easy to rectify if the game continued in that direction rather than trying to sterilize the role.

I mean, WoW had Fistweaver and Discipline priest as dps oriented healers from MoP onwards but generally yeah, dpsing as a healer was really that thing that was really big in FF14 compared to WoW, that was at this point still very traditional in terms of healer gameplay. It was the first thing I learned about FF14 healers and I think it was fairly exciting, especially since when jumping over from WoW, even White Mages Stone felt quite chunky and was visually fairly impressive, not to forget Holy back in the day being quite a powerful nuke. And it was if you ask me the only organic evolution for classical WoW Style MMO Healers to go. When it comes to tanking, we lived in the post DK era of tanks after all, they moved from pure sword and board punching bags who are all about gaining threat to becoming more offensive, pulling dps rotations. So Healer DPSing just felt like the way to go. And I can't imagine who in their right mind wouldn't enjoy it, it was a blast feeling more involved with what the rest of the party does by throwing in stones and actively assisting the party in combat and you mentioned it, SCH was a beast with its dot gameplay and offensive capabilities.

I genuinly feel like since these days, FF14 really lost its touch in terms of what made it so different and exciting compared to WoW. And its not only the healers, I think Bard was fairly cool originally as well with how the devs managed to creat a support role in the physical ranged, just for the entire system nowadays predominantly holding these classes back due to their dps tax which hits Machinist the hardest.