How can we really define Healers?

[Renathras]

Another thread, in another discussion, this came up. But it's actually an interesting question:

here's a thought which occurred to me just now as i type this: what distinguishes a healer as 'in the healing role'? take this thought experiment as an example: overnight, SE has released a patch. Curing Waltz on DNC is now 20y radius like medica2, and has a CD of just 2 seconds. Shield Samba has also been reduced to a 30s cooldown, to match Soil and Kerachole. This would EASILY be enough to complete anything up to extreme trials, and i'd hazard a guess it'd even have been enough to clear P1S and P2S with week 1 gear because they hit like wet noodles. Still, the question is, with those changes in effect, would this recategorise DNC to be a 'healer'? IMO it would not, but it'd have more HPS potential than any of the other healers like this. So, what makes a healer, a 'healer'? how many healing skills vs not-healing skills it has in it's kit? how OFTEN it presses healing vs not-healing skills? some other metric we've yet to see or understand?

Mechanically, something like this has a fair amount of capability, and some WOULD call it a healer while others would not.

If RDM had "Vermedica" with the potency of a Medica but the cast time and MP cost of Vercure, would it be a capable healer? Would it be fair to define it as one? Or would it be something else?

What defines a healer as a Healer and not a something else?

To be fair, DNC already straddles some weird lines, and DNC with this model would even moreso. Some MIGHT call it a healer in that situation. I remember when RDM was introduced, I first thought it would be a healer. After all, "Job with healing abilities that also uses some DPS spells" already described WHM at the time (late HW), just the damage spells being Earth and Wind element instead of Fire and Lightning.

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Is it the focus of the Job (healing vs damage dealing)? The number of healing abilities? How efficient those healing abilities are?

Hm...

[Supersnow845]

The thought experiment is kinda redundant because the situation would never arise, the only definition of healer in 14 is “has a green icon”, WAR and PLD already do the healing role in dungeons, RDM can be an emergency single target healer if needed and mitigation is now mostly a team effort

The definition of roles in this game is so arbitrary because square hates the idea of one role being a fail point, RPR is a surprising good off tank in dungeons if the tank dies, and most “support roles” do more than 50% of a true DPS damage, now you can argue this is a good or bad thing (I personally like how much damage support roles do but I wish the roles were more distinct, like mitigation should be the tank and healers role, healers shouldn’t be invalidated in dungeons, a DPS shouldn’t have better rezz capabilities than a healer etc

But this all comes back to the age old MMO problem where DPS don’t actually belong in the holy trinity, DPS is something everyone is responsible for, however if you give DPS no responsibility and the most fun rotations who the hell would pick a tank or a healer

[KDSilver]

Healers are DPS with varied healing toolkit to support, protect and heal the party when needeed.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

I think the term "Healer" and what it contains depends on the actual game where you talk about it.

A Healer on FFXIV will have a different skill set than a Healer on WoW.
On some games, Healer's doesn't even exist in the "general meaning" of what it should be.

So, I guess we can say that FFXIV are healers the way they are, because they are designed like that, and not because of what we actually want them to be.

Of course this doesn't mean healer on FFXIV can't evolve to have some great improvement, either on the healing parts or the DPS parts of their kits.

[AmiableApkallu]

Ignoring mitigation…

I'd say that the role of the healer should be to do what the other party members cannot: efficiently and effectively manage the party's HP bars and detrimental status effects.

The focus of the job's identity is tied to what the other roles lack. For example, Second Wind doesn't encroach on the healer identity, but self-repairing HP sponges do. If RDM is going to be a grouped into the DPS, then Vercure is fine, but dual-casted Verraise is not.

It then falls on encounter design to dictate how much of a healer's time is devoted to managing HP bars and status effects.

[GrimGale]

The role trinity effectively breaks down classes into roles that serve to focus their kits to deal with one of the three basic types of interaction between NPCs and Players in a "battlefield".

DPS deal with Player>NPC
- Can be CC, Combos, Priming enemies for further damage, or simply going on the offensive.

Tanks deal with NPC>Player
- Getting the enemy attention, creating cover, intercepting attacks and mitigating incomming damage, simply put defending the party.

Support deal with Player>Player
- Its probably the most vague as there are a lot of ways to "assist" teammates, hell even tanking could be considered specialized support. Healing is a pretty straightforward one, but they can buff allies, shield them, give them mobility or anything that makes them more effective at their role.


In the end, all roles have to deal with those three interactions, as all roles must be at least be able to attack, recieve damage and party up. Support is the most ambiguous one as "helping" the party can come in many forms, but is usually the role that most conforms to the game's internal workings as it is the role that can make or break the game systems.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

snip

You just mentionned something really interresting about each role that actually gives me an idea.

When you said that healers can Buff, heal, shield, give mobility (which is kinda the same as buff), it doesn't come short of possibility. Instead, there is a Large amount of combinaison usable.

Even more, it will require less change on classes than an actual full-rework of the role and can be quite appealing for people who wants a "Full support" role. Of course you'll stick with the 1 button damage, but if you have more to manage on the side, it can balance the boring feeling that people have.

Let's take an exemple of what can done to give each healers his own identity while also being Lore-Friendly or logical.

WHM :

The first things that come in mind with WHM is the lost of Wind and Earth elements on the upper level. WHM actually only use Water and Light when they reach lvl 72. Earth and Wind can be used to buff people. Earth for defense/offense and Wind for Mobility.
Maybe using the Earth to buff your comrades for more damage or reducing damage income, and Wind to speed up party movement just like SCH do. (Before telling that SCH already got that and that's redundant, remember that it's only speculation, probably won't happen anyway, but it's still possible when you consider everything related to that). This can make Earth and Wind elements come back, while still being lore Friendly.

SCH :

As we all know, SCH use healing magic related to mathematical and science law (It's in the lore and even more obvious in the French version of the game). They are able to use schemes like Deployments for exemple, which make Scholar kinda the "Strategist" on the ground. Using something like that may lead to great possibility. A strategist must be able to use his strenght at the right moment to make a great counter attack and make it pay. Sadly, our current SCH is mostly defense based but could use serious offense based buff/debuff. It's even in the job description : "utilizing the creatures' (Faerie) magicks to heal the wounded and bolster the strength of their allies."

AST :

As we know, the AST is currently being reworked. I prefer not saying anything at this point and wait to see what they are up to.

SGE :

The Sage use aetherology, sorcery, and medicine all together to make their's spell. According to this, why Sage couldn't buff offensively his teammate by using either of those ?


Their is so much possibilities to do a full support job out of what we currently have. Only adding spell will not resolve anything. What's needed is the use of a new ressources unique to each job and the new spells going along with that. Maybe even build this ressource up by using the only spell of damage you have ? Why not ?

One things is for sure. If Square Enix don't change how Healer's work in the near future, they will reach a wall on what is possible to do with them. They need to do changes at least for the 7.0 Expansion

[Katish]

The definition I'd give healers is, DPS with the ability to keep people alive efficiently. Still dps at the end of the day and their skills should reflect some of that tbh. Still waiting for the day this happens, wistfully that is. As for how Square could move...

Square could redefine healers by fusing some of their button bloat, i.e useless heal skills that basically are just copy pasted and are similar to other skills in their tree. By fusing, the skills keep the effects and identity but rather than four skills you only need one or two to execute that job. Then Square could implement new skills that are unique and worth having for those slots. Perhaps even proper dps combos that could also give off healing when executed correctly. This would not only cut down button bloat but future proof the game for additional updates, as well as, lessen the grievance for healers that focus more on healing.

For scaling purposes, they could introduce this new identity for healers via traits. When scaled down, the healers would play similar to how they do now. When not scaled, some skills would gain copy-pastad effects and the previous skills slots would become entirely new skills altogether, preferably DPS centric. This would: simulate healer skill evolution rather than just potency, have healers keep consistent, and edge people into a more damage centric mindset. That is, how healers focus more on damage than healing in the later content. Ironically, this would also allow Square to not having to go back and rebalance prior content AND them to reconsider where healers stand in terms of end game. Although this makes too much sense and would never happen which is unfortunate.

I personally would also like to see pushes for random AI, so healing isn't as predictable, and sustainability from players, especially tanks, reduced. This would make it so healing would be more spontaneous and needed, and for healers to be required to y'know "heal". But that's only what I personally would like to see and not everyone would agree. Should it ever come to fruition that would be the day xD.

[Hellebore_Ghrian]

Healers are strip poker players on a permanent losing streak.

Pieces of their clothes are taken expansion after expansion until they become naked.

[Limonia]

To me it feels like that there are just some classes/jobs that get defined as healer and put into the healer role so in random group content everyone knows which player is responsible for healing when it's needed. It doesn't matter if tanks and DPS can also heal. Of course they should use them, no question, but it's either integrated into their DPS kit, oGCD, or only for emergency situations. But the healers are the ones actively responsible for healing anything all the three roles can't do passively.

Healers have the most healing skills and their kit kind of resolves around it (yes, I know...). If they'd for some reason give DNC those healing skills you mentioned it would be placed in the healer role and lose most of its DPS kit. Or if all healers where like that - DPS with 3 low CD healing oGCDs - there wouldn't be anything different to 'normal' DPS just that you press an extra button every few seconds. They could just remove healers then instead of reworking them.

They're a mess and need a rework. I like to do DPS as a healer. But it would be boring if they were just DPS with 3 healing oGCDs. Both their DPS and healing aspect should be interesting and engaging. I'd also like it if the healer role would be more like a support role with different types of buffs, heals and DPS.