Dawntrail Healers need a rework

[ty_taurus]

Having less healing skills would actually make healing easier. In an emergency it's easier to choose the right tool when you only have 3 or 4 compared to having 9 or 10. On Scholar I can aoe heal with Succor, Indomitability, Fey Blessing, Whispering Dawn, Sacred Soil, Fey Covenant and even Adloquium if I pair it with Deployment Tactics. That's a lot of options that get further augmented by Fey Illumination, Dissipation, and Protraction in the case of Adloquium Deployment. If we want Healers to be better I think simplifying the healing portion of the kit and adding to DPS complexity is the perfect way to go about that. If a Healer can't choose the right time to heal or DPS it won't matter how many buttons on either side of the equation you give them. They are simply lost in the encounter but it would most assuredly be easier if the healing options were simple and straightforward to allow even the most novice healer to succeed at the part of the job that matters most. Right now healer actions are very poorly matched to the pace of the game and it has got to change.

I agree. There is such a thing as too many options. Every new action you add increases a job's burden of knowledge, making it harder and harder to swiftly make a decision with your actions, and I think the healing aspect has surpassed that currently, not to mention the situation of power creep that has pushed many heals out of circulation in most content. Rather than have 20-something different heals, you could very possibly cut that in half by making the heals you keep more interactive and unique. This not only cuts down on button bloat, but makes it much easier for inexperienced healers to recognize what each heal does at a glance.

Instead of getting new buttons every few levels, we could instead start with simple heals that continue to be built upon over time.

[TheDustyOne]

I'm only going off of my own anecdote here, but I remember back when ShB launched that my healer queues were a lot faster than compared to SB. Tanks were always instant back in SB, while as a healer I had to wait a few minutes.

Nowadays however, it's swapped, despite Duty Finder saying tank in need, it's always healers that get the instant queue. That to me seems like we have less healers comparatively to SB. Sage also didn't change that either, queues are still instant or near instant as healer. The only reason it shows tank in need is because there's a programmed bias for tanks, as that used to be the role that Square had trouble convincing people to play.

So suggesting "everyone stop playing healers", well, people have, it's the only explanation I have for why my healer queues are instant since the ShB pruning. I notice that most of the healers I do end up running into are newer ones that have no experience with the older healers, and so don't know what they missed out on, while the veterans I do run into lament at how things used to be.

Also I have to agree with Ty and Noble, the sheer amount of healing tools we have is absurd and seemingly makes healing more complex than it actually is. Most of the time, they end up replacing most of the healing tools we got much earlier. I seldom need Medica, Cure II, Medica II, Cure III, when I have an oGCD ready that does the job and more at nearly any moments notice.

Why use Medica when Rapture is there? Why use Cure III when I can empower that Rapture with Plenary? In fact, why bother with Rapture when Assize is about to come off cooldown? Why use Medica II when Asylum has been off cooldown for a good minute? We're drowning in so many heals that they're stepping on each others toes. Curbing them back and focusing on making fewer heals more interactive with the rest of the kit would go a long way with making healers more interesting to play and with a much smaller button count.

[IDontPetLalas]

We have a decent amount of okay healers and very rare good/amazing healers. Sorry I want healers to be better too but if most can’t even handle healing with the large amount of healing skills we have now I hate to see how it will be if they cut skills and gave an equal amount of healing and dps skills again.

Nah I’m good. Keep things the way they are. Bad enough trying to get healers to heal with just one dps skill spam. I can’t imagine the disaster it would be if they gave us more dps skills again.

Trimming dps skills down was probably the best thing the devs did for healers. I’ll get hate for this post but idc. I been around since 1.0 so I know everything healers went through up until now. I main healer too. So yeah.

We don't design any other job around the " hey someone could suck at it" mentality. You aren't going to be given "hate" for this treatment, however if you have been around since 1.0 it's surprising if you haven't encountered "okay" and "amazing" and probably terrible people in every single job.

I don't think that anyone has every suggested changes that would cripple healer's abilities to heal. Nor, come to mention it, has the suggestion of equal number of healing and DPS skills come up (although, it could possibly work given a good design- look at PVP).

Basically, what I'm saying is that change is inevitable in a game. So is improvement for players, to various degrees. Healers jobs shouldn't be the exception to this.

[Averax]

I would love for healers to feel diverse. We kind of had that in ARR, but then AST came in and was essentially WHM lite with cards. Now we have sage which is scholar, but better.

[GrimGale]

Honestly, having access to only GCD healing made healing actually kinda fun. I was honestly surprised going back to low level dungeons how much more careful I had to be with "what I chose to cast next". Having to commit to your actions without a quick fix for healing makes it feel surprisingly tactical.

[Zolvolt]

OGCD healing is nice and good, but the problem is that you have an answer for everything they throw at you. there are even situations this expansion you could layer horoscope without casting helios to get people a sliver of hp past what an aoe would kill them it's just terrible that the answer to everything is "never stop casting dps spell" The flow of a class is very smooth now I will say, but even back in stormblood with the significantly longer cast times on all spells, you had to commit to that dps spell or interrupt your cast if your timing or spellspeed put you off. While the flow wasn't quite there yet, it was still more fun than never stop casting dps spell.

[Derio]

Honestly I think they need to streamline some heals in big ways. Free cure should not still be in the game. Cure 2 should be an upgrade to cure 1 and not an additional button. Cure 3 should have been renamed to something else for a GCD aoe heal and Cure 3 should have been a single target upgrade to cure 3.

If I were to redesign I would remove the redundant heals.

Each healer would have a minimum of

3 healing OGCDs
3 Damage dealing OGCDs
3 GCD damage abilites
1 Big Potency damage ability with a small heal potency attached and a 60s cooldown.

All of this would be granted by level 50 where anything additional would be either upgrades or additions.
Even if 1 is main spammable, 2 is your DOT. 3 is your every 30s GCD damage attack and 4 is your every 60s GCD. It would give you a solid baseline as opposed to what we have now.

[Renathras]

Precisely zero people saw the 5.0 healers from the 4.0 healers and thought the changes were good

This is false.

This is the kind of hyperbole that someone often mentions and points out should be avoided.

There were people who saw the healer change from 4.0 to 5.0 and thought the changes were good. I'd wager MOST people though the WHM changes were good, at the very least. Though people now complain, at the time, people seemed to see Misery as a better Aero 3, and the overall Lily changes have been discussed and agreed as an improvement. If we could go back in a time machine (or delve the old forum and reddit posts of that era), you'd probably find more than "Precisely zero" people saying the WHM changes were good.

Also more than zero people liked the SCH changes, though that was more divisive.

I think the AST changes were near universally opposed, but I wouldn't even be too sure that there weren't some people saying they liked those.

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So there were people who liked the SB to ShB healer changes and thought they were good.

Trimming dps skills down was probably the best thing the devs did for healers. I’ll get hate for this post but idc. I been around since 1.0 so I know everything healers went through up until now. I main healer too. So yeah.

For what it's worth, I'm somewhat with you. But my position (I won't mention the name since that's apparently some kind of business pitch or something and I'm not allowed to do that even if everyone else is allowed to pitch their ideas) is that some healers being given more DPS buttons is probably fine, it just shouldn't be all of them. That way, if people like the way healers play now, they can continue doing so. For example, if WHM kept its kit basically as it is now but SCH got its SB DoTs badk (precisely 2 more but both having shorter times and a minor interaction with Fester and Bane), I don't think that would necessarily be bad and it would give the people that like that awful gameplay an outlet. Which I think is sa good thing.

...making all the healer Jobs like that is a terrible idea, though.

I think the much bigger problem is kits vs encounter design. Encounter design heavily prizes oGCD only healing, and GCD healing is unsustainable anyway since it's often weaker AND costs too much MP. The oGCDs are way too powerful, and we have way too many of them.

[Supersnow845]

I promised I wouldn’t reply to you anymore so all I’m going to say is

You need to get over your incessant policing of hyperbole, you know what I meant, everyone else knows what I meant, I’m not going to sit here and discuss that with you

[Renathras]

I'm only going off of my own anecdote here, but I remember back when ShB launched that my healer queues were a lot faster than compared to SB. Tanks were always instant back in SB, while as a healer I had to wait a few minutes.

Nowadays however, it's swapped, despite Duty Finder saying tank in need, it's always healers that get the instant queue. That to me seems like we have less healers comparatively to SB. Sage also didn't change that either, queues are still instant or near instant as healer. The only reason it shows tank in need is because there's a programmed bias for tanks, as that used to be the role that Square had trouble convincing people to play.

I hear this a lot, but it's pretty anecdotal. SB ques were tank > healer >>>> DPS. ShB ques were tank > healer >>>> DPS. The other day I had to wait ~4 mins for an Expert que on healer, as I was 8th in que. I run the new 24 man on DPS (SMN or RDM) these days because the healer ques are around 10 mins (tanks even longer). The tank ones being longer makes sense since there are only 3, but there are still 6 healer spots, so them being so long shows we have an excess of them.

Healers often don't get instant ques, and tanks often still do. So I don't think that there are "less healers comparatively to SB". Also, the little data that I could find from Waback Machine showed that the fewest healer time in FFXIV's history was SB. HW was second lowest. The implication being that healers were pretty hated in SB by most of the player base, including people that typically liked healing, and have become more popular since the ShB changes.

As to some of your questions:

Medica is a weird case because Medica 2 is better in every way (the immediate heal + first tick is already as good as a Medica 1). It's sort of the Cure 1 issue. Cure 3, on the other hand, is spamable and has no preconditions, while Plenary Rapture is limited, especially at the start of a fight that opens with a 1 HP Doom. Cure 3 ALSO can be cast on someone at range. Generally the party stacks together and you cast it, but suppose you get the Flare debuff (three blue arrows pointing apart) and have to run far from the party when everyone needs lots of healing? If your co-healer is down, as a WHM, you can Benediction yourself (100% heal oGCD weave) while targeting a party member as you run, Swiftcast Cure 3 on the stack, get to your position, cast another Cure 3 on the rest of the party. Now you've solved the Doom problem. Assize is (mostly) used for damage, so it lining up with a heal need is somewhat haphazard and dependent on the fight. Medica 2 vs Asylum is a simple answer: If the party has to spread. Asylum does have a long range now, but it's not the ENTIRE arena, but Medica 2 will stay with party members no matter how far they have to go. Medica 2 can also be spammed (again, heal + first tick = Medica 1) AND has a 5y grater range than Medica 1, so if the party has to somewhat spread and Asylum isn't covering people, but they're too far apart for Cure 3 to work, Medica 2 spam is a valid option. Note Asylum, Medica 1, and Rapture have a 15y radius, Cure 3 a 10y radius, but Medica 2 has a 20y radius.

WHM's heals that are completely redundant is a list of one: Medica 1. (Technically Cure 1 has some advantages over Cure 2, a big one being it isn't MP negative to use...this is just essentially never an issue unless you were just Raised and Lucid is on CD, and another is that Cure 1 is a 1.5 sec cast vs Cure 2's 2.0, making it slightly more responsive which CAN sometimes be a clutch save where Cure 2 would be too slow; Medica 1 only costs 100 MP less than Medica 2 and heals for FAR less while having the same cast time, so it does not have those advantages). If Medica 1 directly upgraded into Medica 2 and Cure 1 upgraded into Cure 2 AND Cure 2 was changed to have a 1.5 sec cast and cost around 500-700 MP, that would work.

WHM's other heals do have specific use cases, however.

One of the reasons SCH feels so GOOD is that it has so many options. It has a tool for every situation, something only AST can rival (WHM and SGE are more streamlined - and everyone here who is arguing for this now typically say that WHM and SGE are more boring...). In fact, it's very odd to me the very people arguing healers need more DPS buttons because too few is boring...are arguing healers need fewer heals because too many is too hard/stressful. Like...the two concepts are at odds with one another.

We don't need fewer healing buttons, we need more situations that give us reasons to pick specific ones vs others and for them to be made more distinct/their distinctions more noticeable and useful for encounters (e.g. the WHM Flare example I gave above flexing Cure 3's cast range advantage).

I would love for healers to feel diverse. We kind of had that in ARR, but then AST came in and was essentially WHM lite with cards. Now we have sage which is scholar, but better.

Agreed. And people get mad at me for pitching this idea, but it's the best one. Make the healers not play the same, and that way, people have better odds that at least one will be to their liking. In ARR, we had WHM for people that liked healing and SCH for people that liked being a support. And it worked magnificently.

Honestly, having access to only GCD healing made healing actually kinda fun. I was honestly surprised going back to low level dungeons how much more careful I had to be with "what I chose to cast next". Having to commit to your actions without a quick fix for healing makes it feel surprisingly tactical.

It's like I say all the time - the solution isn't doubling down to enshrine oGCD healing via weaves in between damage buttons as the ideal (necessitating a greater DPS kit in the process), but rather pruning/combining/weakening oGCD healing and designing encounters and kits to utilize GCD healing (a good first step would be making them not kill your MP when you so much as glance in the general direction of Cure 3...)

Each healer would have a minimum of...

While I agree with some of this - Cure 3 should be the first spell in the Cura line (if we're using FF11 nomenclature) or Heal line (if we wanted to honor FF1 instead) - I also disagree with some:

Screw it, I'm saying it: 4 Healers Model. The ideal should be having each of the healers having a different kit. All healers having the same damage kit of 1 DoT, 1 spamnuke, 1 something else, and 1 oGCD damage weave being replaced with all the healers having the same damage kit of 3 damage oGCDs, 3 damage GCDs, and 1 60 sec recast big potency damage ability with a small heal is not an improvement.

An improvement would be for one healer to keep the damage kit it has now, one to have some DoTs sprinkled in, one to have a RDM or SMN level caster rotation, and one to have...well, something else, though I've no idea what other thing there would be (though I have some ideas...I did once pitch SGE getting a combo system with some GCD CD attacks, think like MCH, since the lasers would allow this to look visually fine).

Further, the abundance of oGCD weaves is one of the many reasons I don't like DPS (or somewhat Tank) Jobs. NIN's burst is...not fun. Trying to align RDM's oGCDs isn't fun, either. That little maintenance Enchanted Reprise or Acceleration to "fix" the rotation is stupid to me, and speaks to bad design. It's not "skill ceiling", it's "clunk", and I've long said I do not consider "mastering clunk" to be "skill".

BUT: 4 Healers Model - the idea is fine for ONE healer Job to be like what you're asking for. Sure. And THREE to be other things.

Every healer going from being the same in one way to being all the same...just in a different way, is no improvement. Both cases are where one group of people (those who like whatever that same is) are all happy and everyone else is not. It's just a different group the second time, but the same problem. And it doesn't fix the encounter design not working for healers anyway.

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THAT said:

Every healer right now has a minimum of 3 healing oGCDs (if we include barriers in that mix...and maybe even if we don't, depending on if we allow Lilies to be counted as "oGCDs" for this purpose or not...)
Every healer has 3 GCD damage abilities (Glare/Broil/Malific/Dosis, Dia/Biolysis/Combust/EuDosis, Misery/Ruin2/Macrocosmos/Plegma+Pneuma+Toxicon too)
Every healer but SCH has a big potency damage ability with a small heal attached (Assize and debatably Misery if you count Solace and Rapture/Earthly Star OR Macrocosmos/Pneuma and honestly Plegma more since Kardia exists)

The only thing they don't already have is 3 damage dealing oGCDs, though that depends on how wide you define that (for example, Presence of Mind and Dissipation aren't STRICTLY damage oGCDs, but are used as damage oGCDs since PoM is mostly used on Glare casts and Dissipation on more Energy Drains, and Thin Air is often used for a Glare cast, making it very technically a damage oGCD, and Swiftcast can also be used as a DPS gain for movement...)

...so WHM, ironically given how it's viewed as the baby healer that has no DPS focus, yet again actually meets these standards. (Same with what I've pointed out before that WHM is the least "Glarespam" of the healers...)

So every healer already has those things right off the bat even with the present kits, and WHM has all of them, even if no changes were made. Huh...honestly, that's a bit of a surprise to me, too.

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And as for what you said about streamlining heals/remove redundant ones: As I point out above in response to the other guy, what is "redundant" depends entirely on what you're looking at. Some people might call Medica 2 redundant with Rapture or Asylum, but it isn't at all, as I've pointed out. And likewise Cure 3 vs Plenary Rapture.

I promised I wouldn’t reply to you anymore so all I’m going to say is

You need to get over your incessant policing of hyperbole, you know what I meant, everyone else knows what I meant, I’m not going to sit here and discuss that with you

I honestly don't mind if you reply to me at all.

As for the hyperbole: Not everyone does. If everyone did, it would defeat the point of using it. Using it only makes sense if one reasonably suspects some people will agree with (or not know better than) the statement, or to overstate the strength of a position.

I will get over my incessant policing of hyperbole when people get over their incessant compulsion to use hyperbole. Fair?