The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Mactarion]

There is a lot of talk about a healer problem recently, with a lot of requested changes. I want to talk about that is very important to be aware of to understand the current flood of requested changes for the role. (there is also a tl:tr, and I am interested into peoples opinion on it, since I didn't see anyone trying to clarify it, this is also my opinion ofc.)

May it be the solo leveling experience, small pulls in Dungeons, wall to wall pulls, Trials, normal Raids, Extremes, Savage, Savage early weeks or Ultimates, the healing experience is not the same. In each of those, Healer need to have completely different skill sets, that are very different from "be better at your damage rotation". While you can do all 8 party content until early savage using the mitigation and ogcd healing from only one healer to clear the content, its not possible in Ultimates or week one Savage. And playing healer also becomes very different when changing your party, a wall to wall pull, with a low geared tank, that dosen't use cds is different from a tank that uses his cds and dps that blast the mob pack in a few seconds. Same for incoming damage in every fight, healing Thunder God is different then healing The High Seraph, and they are in the same alliance raid. This ofc leads to very different expectations people have at "healer content". Someone who does high-end raiding in a well coordinated Static, has such a difference experience then someone who mostly does his weekly roulettes, or someone who does early Savage in pf. And naturally all those people want different things to make their content more enjoyable, like making the Role play harder, but easier then it is now, less incoming damage or how about more incoming damage, less responsibility but also maybe more responsibility. I can see why it is such a hard problem to resolve, and impossible to make everyone happy.

tl:tr There is a problem with healer feedback. The healer role plays completely different depending on what content you do, and it not differs in a way of you doing a different rotation, it needs complete different awareness and knowledge. Which leads to different requests for healer changes.

I do appreciate the healer role in ff14 a lot. And my fear is that healer drifts to the kind of support we see in other mmo's, either a "only" healer or a dps with some support skills. I don't like both of them to be honest. Being a only healer locks you out of a lot of solo content, and becomes a not needed role depending on the content, and a dps with support skills feels just like uhm rdm or smn, or the physical range categorie, which I would play if I want to be a "dps with some support skills".
I personally hope that healer will not change in his core, I do like that it feels like, you always get a different experience, with each content, each grp, each pull, and that there is value behind my damage spells and my healing.

[ForsakenRoe]

i agree, there is a problem with healer feedback, but it's the same problem as any feedback: ask 10 people their opinion on how to make healers more attractive as a role to main, and you'll likely get 10 different answers. i guess the trick is to look at the overlap in the answers to find 'the changes that most people would be ok with', since it's a very heated topic and people dont want to back down from the idea they believe is 'the right one' (myself included)

the thing is, the healer role hasnt actually changed in terms of it's designed goal, that is 'do damage to kill the enemy asap, while keeping team alive'. ARR was a jank time when people were trying to work out the systems of a new game reborn from the ashes, so of course the early clears of raids were going to be very jank looking. Early HW started to see a transition to more focus on pushing dps, where tanks started to experiment more with dropping into DPS stance (rip Deliverance we miss you), with the final tier Creator solidifying the concept of tanks and healers trying to push as much damage as possible. SB removed Cleric Stance dancing, making the ability for healers to DPS more accessible, you could no longer lock yourself out of being able to heal, you just throw a Stone whenever you see you can afford time to. This, i think, was the right balance of 'accessible' vs 'engaging complexity'. Being locked out of doing your role wasn't ever a good thing, it'd be like 'oh you're in DPS stance on tank? ok you cant use any mitigations!'

The issue started with SHB, where they removed actions from the DPS side of healers, to make them all behave like AST. 1 nuke, 1 dot. the issue is, AST had to have that more 'simple' rotation because of the card management, porting it over to WHM and SCH when they dont have a system on the side to justify it was not sensible at all. It'd be like if they ported MCH's cast times from HW over to BRD for the sake of 'well they're in the same role so they should both have the cast times'. Oh wait, they did that, meaning that with this healer 'make them all 1 nuke 1 dot' change, they had a previous example of what happens when you enforce design parity across a role, and still charged ahead to ram it through. Now we've also got the 'pure vs barrier' split rammed through, which has IMO not worked at all, as SCH SGE is an incredibly strong comp, yet WHM AST cannot function in high end content due to lack of mitigation. This brings to mind their idea in SHB that they'd be making 2 of the tanks 'Main tank' and 2 of them 'Second tank/Off tank', which fell through right away and now we have 4 tanks that can MT or OT as needed.

Saying 'i hope healer will not change in his core' is a sentiment that i think everyone will actually agree on. Healers should be as easy to pick up and play as they are now. Noone should pick up WHM and go 'oh god what do i do how do i keep the team alive', it should have clear simple 'this heals 1 person for lots' and 'this heals in an aoe, and puts a regen effect on everyone' buttons. The proposal I and some others push for is to just put some engagement back into the role via making the DPS side of things more interesting again. We, whether you want to admit it or not, have a LOT of time spare in this game where we can throw out damage. In fact, any EX roulette I do as a Sage, it's a genuine surprise if I have to use a GCD heal, because we have so many OGCD tools to use, they're just not needed. This means that my 15 or so mins experience in EX roulette GCDwise is to press Dyskrasia over and over, until we reach a boss, then press Dosis over and over, refresh a dot every 30s and press Phlegma every 45.

To you it may feel like you get a different experience with each content or group, and I dont want to try and tell you you're wrong, I've had experiences from group to group where I have to shift skills around because my cohealer this time does a different thing from the cohealer from last week. But the end goal of every fight, as you learn it more and more, is to get to the point where you execute the perfect rotation you would on a training dummy, or as close to it as possible. For healers, that rotation happens to be exceptionally dull to many players, so they're asking for change. I don't want to completely upend the role and make it 'gigabrain only you must have 190 IQ to understand how Esuna the debuff', the healing side of healer can stay as it is IMO. What I'd like to see is just 2 or 3 skills added for doing damage, something to spice up the humdrum Glare spam. Even a change as low effort as 'when your Dia ticks on an enemy, it has a chance to proc a buff that makes your next Holy hit for 300% damage', making it a gain to use a Holy in singletarget, would be something at least. Not as much as many would like, but it'd be a very small start, and as they say, 'the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step'.

The final thing to note is that while people can get very loud about their opinions on the role, we don't (at least, i don't) do it out of malice or hatred of the role, the game, or the casual playerbase SE is appealing to with the changes of the past 4 years. We do it because we love the role, we love the game, and we want the causal playerbase who get into healing to have fun and enjoy it, but also give them the chance to grow in skill and technique as they play the role. Keep healing accessible and easy to understand, make the damage side of the healers more engaging, and have the 'maximum engagement' be the game of 'how can i use the tools i have to heal with, in a way that lets me do as much damage as i can?'. After all, 'boss died' is 100% mitigation for your party, so helping to get 'boss ded' to be a thing is just doing your job, right?

sorry not sorry for essay

[IDontPetLalas]

That's a very interesting "essay", I appreciated it. I would only added that the "accessible" barrier should really apply to the mid-level- I understand that it having a few easy to understand healing skills for a CNJ makes sense, but by the time someone hits WHM, and definitely by level 50, it should be possible to introduce more complexity. I definitely don't feel challenged when going from a sprout to a level 90, I get a couple of skills, or a skill gets a minor increase in potency.

[Hazama999]

I am actually very surprised there is still some healer talk on these forums. It feels like everyone has said their piece and/or made their peace with regards to current healer design. Most of what I read feels all-too-familiar, retreads old ground. This isn't to say these arguments hold no water or anything. I agree with most of them, actually. It's just that... Idk... Feels like we've gone beyond beating a dead horse and are just gunning for striking the bedrock.

At the same time, I do recognize that there is a need for the continuing feedback. I am far, far, far too tired to crank out my grievances with the role in excruciating detail, but I commend those who do.

[Nizzi]

I am actually very surprised there is still some healer talk on these forums. It feels like everyone has said their piece and/or made their peace with regards to current healer design. Most of what I read feels all-too-familiar, retreads old ground. This isn't to say these arguments hold no water or anything. I agree with most of them, actually. It's just that... Idk... Feels like we've gone beyond beating a dead horse and are just gunning for striking the bedrock.

At the same time, I do recognize that there is a need for the continuing feedback. I am far, far, far too tired to crank out my grievances with the role in excruciating detail, but I commend those who do.

For what it's worth, from Yoshida's recent responses to the two healer questions in the live letter, it seems clear that he's frustrated of hearing the same thing over and over too, which is why I think it's even more important to keep striking the bedrock. I hope people with the same grievances go to all three FanFests that are coming up and keep pushing. Make the developers unable to keep ignoring us.

[Hazama999]

100% agree with that.

[Liam_Harper]

For what it's worth, from Yoshida's recent responses to the two healer questions in the live letter, it seems clear that he's frustrated of hearing the same thing over and over too, which is why I think it's even more important to keep striking the bedrock.

He seems frustrated in general lately, which is a rather bad sign.

WoW went the same way. Developers ignoring feedback for years with a "we know best attitude". It falls apart and finally they turn to the players and go "Fine! What do you want then!?". At that stage the damage is already done, veterans gave up ages ago, half the players are used to the new systems, half are still trying to push feedback and all they get is a jumbled mess of conflicting ideas. The developers, their own bad ideas having fallen flat are now relying on the players to tell them what to do, but the players can't anymore and shouldn't have to. The developers just see a "whiny" playerbase who are never happy no matter how much they try to please them and become resentful. Eventually there's a Devs vs Players dynamic and both sides resent the other.

I feel like that's the path we're going down. We can't fix their mess for them or make their game. They need to realize they've done a lot of damage, set expectations and ingrained bad habits into players with their design over the years and it will take time and effort to undo it.

[Heroman3003]

There is rather complicated issue with all the demanded healer feedback sumrised. From what I saw there are two things demanded: more buttons and more reasons to push existing buttons. Main issue there, is that the two solutions are not compatible, and adding one will only anger the other crowd.

If content is designed in way that all the existing healer buttons that are completely useless in 99% of the actual game content are actually necessary in at least half of it - suddenly healing becomes complicated and hard at all levels, and of course, as we all know well, the one to get all the blame for failure even when its not actually their fault, is the healer. Now imagine how much worse it will be when it WILL be the healer's fault. And not to mention that old content will have the issues still, and only new content can be designed that way.

On the other hand, if the approach of 'add more buttons' for DPS rotation is taken... Well, I present a question of 'where the hell does it fit?'. Most healers have 2 full and one about 2/3rds full 12-slot hotbars of spells and abilities. Where the hell do you fit more? You could, say, prune existing skills, since, as said above, they're only really used in savage and extreme content basically... But then what becomes of healers in that content? The healing itself loses complexity.

I think that's the issue of listening to feedback given by people who almost exclusively play high-end stuff like Savage and Extremes. As someone who explicitly has 0 interest in grindstone that is Savage at the moment, I think healers have too many 'do nothing' buttons; but those buttons with their miniscule mitigations and stat adjustments do matter.... but only in Savage and Extreme. So you can't just remove them to make space for things useful and fun-to-use everywhere because of their importance in savage and you can't make them necessary to use everywhere either because that would raise skill floor of healers in general a lot higher, for a role that is the sacrificial goat whenever anything goes wrong.

Honestly, personally, I think current state of healer is 'fine'. Not insanely great, but also not terrible. There are a few skills I literally dont see reasons for existing (Ruin II....) that could be removed with 0 loss, but just not enough to make space for 'real DPS rotation' everyone demands; and I can't imagine any of the excessively loud savage-grinding minority being happy if all those 5% mitigation math abilities are replaced with something more 'practical' on simpler levels of content either. And making healer complex at all stages of the game would just mean less people breaking through the skill floor, which means less fresh people willing to heal, all while old healers who want something that just wont fit will inevitably remain dissatisfied.

[IDontPetLalas]

There is rather complicated issue with all the demanded healer feedback sumrised. From what I saw there are two things demanded: more buttons and more reasons to push existing buttons.
On the other hand, if the approach of 'add more buttons' for DPS rotation is taken... Well, I present a question of 'where the hell does it fit?'. Most healers have 2 full and one about 2/3rds full 12-slot hotbars of spells and abilities.
I think that's the issue of listening to feedback given by people who almost exclusively play high-end stuff like Savage and Extremes. As someone who explicitly has 0 interest in grindstone that is Savage at the moment, I think healers have too many 'do nothing' buttons; but those buttons with their miniscule mitigations and stat adjustments do matter.... but only in Savage and Extreme. So you can't just remove them to make space for things useful and fun-to-use everywhere because of their importance in savage and you can't make them necessary to use everywhere either because that would raise skill floor of healers in general a lot higher, for a role that is the sacrificial goat whenever anything goes wrong.
snip

I believe you've underestimated the options that could be available.

To keep it short
1 It is not necessarily "more buttons and more reasons to push buttons"- that is busywork. If you read prior posts, you will see "engagement" popping up many times, there is a nuance there that is quite different.

2 You then express a concern over hotbars and buttons - we have already seen that SE can integrate skills in PVP, even in PVE- so that a single button is used for more than one skill. It is not mandatory to add more buttons IF additional skills are added - and, in fact, some skills may be removed or combined.

3- Feedback from those people who play Savage and Ultimate SHOULD be listened to because basically- have read their skills, need to know how their skills integrate with the other roles, and have gone past the basic learning curve in their roles so that they have the judgement to use the skills optimally.

4- The concern that you're expressing regarding removing mitigation from some roles ? If not used, it wipes people in Savage content now, it doesn't in normal content. I doubt very much that SE would change that, however if they did make things hit harder if it wasn't mitigated by healers at some points, that would be great.

5- I think most people would accept that early (pre level 50) should be simple, but as with other roles there should be a feeling of growth, and certainly by level 90, then it should be a fully-fleshing job that has some depth and complexity and it should lose its homogenization. Personally, I don't want it so dumbed down that someone can leave it on a shelf for months, or have it as a alt, or perform as well as someone who has mained it for years.

[GrimGale]

On the other hand, if the approach of 'add more buttons' for DPS rotation is taken... Well, I present a question of 'where the hell does it fit?'. Most healers have 2 full and one about 2/3rds full 12-slot hotbars of spells and abilities. Where the hell do you fit more? You could, say, prune existing skills, since, as said above, they're only really used in savage and extreme content basically... But then what becomes of healers in that content? The healing itself loses complexity.

How to make the DPS part more engaging with 3 dps buttons: By World of Warcraft's Restoration Shaman.

You get 1 DoT: Flame Shock
You get 1 Quick basic damaging spell: Lightning Bolt
You get 1 very slow cast but very hard hitting Nuke: Lava Burst

Flame Shock has a chance, everytime it deals damage over time, to cause your Next Lava Burst to become instant cast.

Lava Burst will crit if it hits a target affect with Flame Shock

Now, replace Flame Shock with Dia, Lightning Bolt with Glare and Lava Burst with, I dunno, some new very flashy spell that is very satisfying visually.