The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

It might shock you to know this, but if you leave the official forums and read other discussions of FFXIV healers, like in YouTube comments and content creator videos, your position is actually the minority one. Most seem to be entirely satisfied with healing in FFXIV right now.

So your position is that the forums comprise too small a user base... so let's instead look to only the dozen or so big, consistent XIV streamers --whose revenue is better met by skipping gameplay criticisms in favor of upbeat play-- and who make up a group a thousandth or so the size of the already small forum community???

But, okay, by all means, let's go ahead and test that.

If I type in "FFXIV healing" into YouTube, my first several videos are...

• A Crap Guide to Healing in FFXIV - which basically notes that the only ones who'd like healing in XIV are those who like the ego-trip of being able to let others die.
  
  
• The Ultimate Beginner Guide to Healing - gives no comments either way as to whether XIV healing is fun or well designed, but simply how best to think about it.
  
  
• Healer Guide | Introduction to Healing in FFXIV | Tips for Becoming a Better Healer - neutral (<picture of fight spreadsheet> "healing in XIV... means researching a fight or making mental notes of outgoing damage as it happens and planning your toolkit around it with little to no variance") - makes no attempt to say it's fun or that people should try it, only what it is.
  
  
• Comparing All Healers in FFXIV Endwalker - Neutral - Notes that there is a preferred healer duo, "Mechanics in FFXIV's raids are very predictable and easy to play around. Healers at that level generally don't struggle to keep up with heals once the fight is known, and overall healing output becomes less important than the damage dealt."
  
  
• Healing in FFXIV is Not Fun - (It wasn't sarcastic -- about that, at least.)
  
  
• 5 Jobs for People Who Lack Brains - [I](Warrior + Healers give or take an AST and a RPR.)
  
  
• Healing in FFXIV Has Big Problems - (Zepla's response video to "Healing in FFXIV is not fun") - she notes that likewise healing, especially, on AST, has got more boring / made it lose that spark for her.

If I more specifically put in "FFXIV healing bad," "FFXIV healing problem," it narrows further towards the negative, but if I put in "FFXIV healing fun," "FFXIV healing good," or "try FFXIV healing," or "FFXIV healing for you..." I get no increase in positive posts. There's just the one positive video, which opens already with the very words "Healer is not well designed."

:: Heck, there are entire series of videos specifically on ideas for healer improvements or in hashing out what the crux of the problems are...


Now, if we take a list of content creators typically considered "big" around FFXIV and don't solely cover lore or music, we might end up with something like...

• Desperius - "even [dealing self-damage] would address the problem of how boring dealing damage can be [as healer], since then you'd have to heal yourself up after..."
• Zepla - 'healer changes since Stormblood have, on the whole, made them less interesting.'
• LucyPyre - {Essentially calls it a shitshow, but fine for brain-dead-ing.}
• MisshappenChair - {Essentially calls it a shitshow, but fine for brain-dead-ing.}
• Drak - <doesn't heal>
• Larryzaur - notes that their distinctions are almost solely in their visuals
• Merri - frequent critiques
• Shenpai - <no comments>
• Meoni - fights are overly one-and-done
• MrHappy - modest critiques, usually more on the Twitch side
• Xeno - has critiqued, despite likely having been bred/evolved, and subjected to many surgeries, to make him better fit a two-minute burst mold.
• Grael - <just does fight guides>
• Misteq - <just does fight guides>

So where's this grand majority consensus, then, that XIV healing are "entirely satisfied with healing in XIV right now"?

[Shurrikhan]

Triage healing works in other places because the game engine can actually keep up with the quick-reaction demand that 'triage' is at it's core. If you see the tank get clapped by a TB down to 20%, and a melee DPS happened to get clonked by it, and both are bleeding out to the attached DOT, FFXIV wouldn't allow for the quick decision making of 'I'll let the DPS suffer for the one GCD of cast time I'll use to keep the tank up, then Tetra them' or 'I'll Tetra the DPS now, and then cast time Cure2 the tank, and hope the tank has enough sustain/mit left to keep themselves up till my cast finishes', because every action in this game's crusty engine doesn't actually register on time, 'Bene lag' is the prime example.

I think you'd be surprised by how much more could work if simply removed of certain arbitrary obstacles.

Take the "Bene lag" for instance. It actually was unique in how long it took to take effect, specifically because it didn't actually apply the heal until after its animation had completed, whereas others may apply it at the start of the animation. But, shit like that doesn't require a change in netcode to fix. They just need to not purposely delay, for thematic "grand heal" purposes, an emergency action's activation to... well after/longer than the cases it'd otherwise best be used for.

That said, I do agree that a HUGE number of opportunities could be opened up for healers through broader (or, more underlying) improvements and little quirks to better leverage them. Pre-healing, for instance, is kind of absurdly fun to me -- to hit an ally with the very end of a precisely timed preemptive cast and instantly follow it up with another banked instant cast to bounce their health back up the moment a TB had reduced them to critical (rather than just... oGCDing it). And, we were able to support that already -- we just had it covered up too much to matter. These days, I'd also love to see manipulable (diminishing-per-bounce) chain-heals, stored or time-locked heals, life-linking, and other fun little mechanics becomes available to our healing roster. Yeah, our netcode may get in the way of some of those somewhat, but I don't think it'd cripple them.

It'd be cool to have actual 'triage' situations, but the reason it works better in, say, WOW, is that AOE healing is not plentiful. It's either kinda weak but spammable, or has some internal CD like WildGrowth, Circle of Healing, Dream Breath, Spiritbloom, PowerWord:Radiance, etc. In order to have a similar environment here, Medica and it's equivalents would need to have a 10s CD at minimum.

Maybe they could do it with a hacky workaround though, some kind of debuff that means 'only single target healing affects this player for X seconds', then have it applied to, idk, 2 DPS while they get clapped by adds.

I don't think we need anything particularly wonky to do that. We just need to stop making AoEs so damn OP.

Heck, the most fundamental difference between XIV AoE heals and WoW's isn't that WoW's are tuned more weakly, but rather that AoEs don't have to be simultaneously useful for a half-sized party and a full-sized party.

You can make up for that light party / full party wonkiness quite easily, though, just by having a portion of the AoE's potency be split among all receivers. The AoEs' total potency would still increase with party count, but not so steeply as to make all else irrelevant.