General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[ty_taurus]

Loved the idea for Thin Air granting the next spell to be instant cast, I'd be down for that.

In addition to the mp recovery stuff, I'd like it if we were also given back offensive debuffs on bosses again please. (Disable/Virus/Addle)



Just wanted to say that this is the greatest summary of WHM's stormblood experience I've ever read.

What's really nice about switching Thin Air to instant cast and moving the MP management to an offensive spell is it gives WM a really unique niche as a powerful raiser. Ablution -> Thin Air -> Raise gives you a raise at 1200 MP, a second raise at 2400, then you could use a second Ablution if you have it and Swiftcast to get a third raise for 1200 MP, 3 instant cast raises at the MP cost of 2 potentially, which helps WHM carve itself a stronger identity as the safe healer.

[Rilifane]

In addition to everything Semi said, there's also the problem of extreme rigidity in party comp and toolkit on top of predictable, bursty damage and everything else.
I'll just compare it to WoW here for a moment.
In Cataclysm, a talent called "Archangel" existet which consumed Atonement stacks (up to 5) to increase your healing for 18s and recover mana. 30s cooldown. Atonement stacks were gained by casting Smite, your Glare-equivalent.
Almost no Holy Priests played with that talent as Smite had no synergy with anything from the toolkit so damage aside, Smite essentially did "nothing" but ate several talent points. But there were multiple ways in which you could benefit from it.
1) you traded 5 GCDs every 30s at most for a signifcant increase in healing (iirc it was 25% or even 30%), you had a controlled burst healing at the price of regularly sacrificing a GCD for damage. Since you always had a few openings even in a game with constant damage, it was entirely possible, it simply required attention and good timing.
2) the mana you regenerated was % based so anything that increased Int (your output stat that also increased max mana) recovered more mana - trinkets that temporarily increased Int increased the gain from both effects, same with Int pots which shared a cooldown with mana pots but if done right, an Int pot could actually give more mana back than a pure mana pot.
It was risky at times but overall, Archangel Holy was a beast in healing if done correctly and it allowed our group to drop a healer very early on to make up for our not-so-great dps.

That sort of choice doesn't exist here. One could argue that the classes are our specs but their toolkits are fixed. There is always exactly one way to play each healer with no way to modify their style to lean closer towards support or dps or even raw healing. The path is completely predeterminded and that's the end of it. I'm not saying that talent trees are the solution to all of our problems but we suffer from a lack of choice on every level.
Everything in this game is completely railroaded from start to finish and yet what you have to do on healer varies wildly depending on content and other players. The healer in a chaotic clownfiesta alli raid with everyone dying faster than you can hardrezz and collecting stacks like pokemon has the exact same toolkit as the top-end raider in a coordinated static where the WAR basically solo heals the savage boss that gets deleted before the only healcheck in the entire fight comes up.

All healers could be so much but the devs insist on us not being able to make choices, let alone meaningful ones.
Healers currently suffer most from their numerous design choices that eliminated any form of interaction, choice, variety and skill ceiling but the problem is a much bigger one than just the lack of downtime activity for healers. While it would help if we finally get a decent downtime kit, the game itself has issues and they doubled down on all of them.
*cough*2minburstsnobodylikes*cough*

[currentlemon]

Wow. I really like the suggestions you made for WHM. Especially, Arcane Ward. It's like a Ley Lines for BLM but built specifically for WHM and it is more forgiving, even though there is nothing wrong with that. Regen is gone and replaced entirely with unique spells, which I like. Ensuna is gone too and instead has been merged with Cure I, which is an interesting change. Also, props for keeping the number of buttons low. I counted a total of 29 spells for WHM after reading the list again.

[Renathras]

Sometimes, the best thing to do in an echo chamber is try to NOT be an echo chamber. One way is to look outside the chamber and see if your collective views match those of the outside world. For one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX-cBCA7114

Have a read through the comment section on this video. Something that stands out to me is how...different...their collective and average views seem to be vs this forum. This isn't to say that can't be an echo chamber as well (though that's less likely since YouTube commenters are probably a more general cross-section of society than specialized forums like this are) or that they're necessarily a majority (though, again, they're probably a more general cross-section), but it's instructive to see those views seen as alien or "contrarian" here are, in fact, likely not either of those things and are somewhat mainstream views when looking at the more general population.

[AmiableApkallu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX-cBCA7114

Have a read through the comment section on this video. Something that stands out to me is how...different...their collective and average views seem to be vs this forum.

The views expressed in the comments add nothing of real value to the views I've seen expressed in the forums or on Reddit, or hold in my own head. It's the same experiences and opinions and arguments, repeated, everywhere.

It's a fool's errand trying to determine what the "mainstream" view is from what is almost certainly the tiny fraction of players that bother to comment on the Internet. And it's somewhat irrelevant since it's not like someone's going to go, "oh, this is a good/bad thing because it's the mainstream view."

What we're ultimately stuck with is SE's own view of healing (as of 2021, anyway):

Mrhappy1227: Healers in Final Fantasy XIV often discuss how often they are casting DPS spells despite being healers. Often nicknaming jobs like White Mage a “Glare Mage” as an example. The Media Tour build has some new healing skills that also have damage components to them. Has the team taken any feedback from the players on improving interactivity with the healers? Whether that be more interesting DPS skills or more prominent healing requirements.

Yoshida: So I totally understand that those healers that have a very high player skill level and they’ve really mastered their jobs go into these different raids or battles and when they do have some downtime between their heals they do cast more offensive spells. Some of them desire to have more technical aspects of it so they are more active and I totally understand that sentiment. But of course the basis of a healer is to heal so I think the development team and I have this thinking of getting that sense of exhilaration from doing really good heal work.

That being said I don’t think we would do any sort of dramatic addition of offensive skills moving forward. By having these offensive abilities some players, like new healers, might feel pressured like “oh do I have to have good DPS while I’m healing?” or some players might be aggressive like “oh hey you have an offensive skill in your kit, why don’t you use it?” and I don’t think that’s optimal either.

Amusingly, while trying to dig that up, I found the "just go play Ultimate" quote, but it's actually everything said before that that's interesting now that Asphodelos is actually out (emphasis is mine):

Q: Healers are currently putting out too much healing compared to damage taken and have few damage-dealing options and limited flexibility in battle. People are even clearing Pandæmonium with tank-only parties. Are there plans to make healers more vital to parties?

A: We hold back on the difficulty of the initial Savage raids of each expansion to allow more people to clear, which goes for Asphodelos as well.

I imagine a lot of comparisons are being drawn between the current encounters and the Savage encounters added in Patch 5.4, but the difficulty will be gradually increased as players get more comfortable with their jobs again.

[Sebazy]

Sometimes, the best thing to do in an echo chamber is try to NOT be an echo chamber. One way is to look outside the chamber and see if your collective views match those of the outside world. For one example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX-cBCA7114

Is his view any better though?

Case in point, 2:50 - Regarding adding a DPS rotation: 'It'll create a situation where doing the current raid tier becomes nigh impossible'. Really? Looks like he made his mind up and made a video to try and justify it. Where's the rational behind this statement?

His thoughts on who is complaining seems flawed to me as well. The biggest source of discord seems to be players that have stepped up to Savage/ultimate and then step back down to more casual content such as 24 mans and Extremes and promptly realise little there is to do because there's so little damage coming in.

Lastly, he doesn't seem to realise how inconsistent content is within a given tier. Barb's a pretty solid Extreme, meanwhile Zodiark was arguably one of the worst. And whilst this Savage tier is a great healer check from what I hear (And it's not the first, we've had fights such as Godka in the past that were also excellent fun), they need to be weighed alongside dull car crashes such as E8S.

Seems to me like we're just looking from one echo chamber into another. There's no grass there either.