#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Azurarok]

It's not surprising this doesn't stop being an issue when the role continues to get more healing skills than anything else every expac when most of the healing needs can largely be handled with skills learned by lv30~70 depending on who you ask and they keep being afraid of pushing things too far.

They probably could increase incoming unavoidable damage if they weren't so dead set on the strict DDR fight design heavily punishing players for taking avoidable damage too

[CaptainLagbeard]

It's not surprising this doesn't stop being an issue when the role continues to get more healing skills than anything else every expac when most of the healing needs can largely be handled with skills learned by lv30~70 depending on who you ask and they keep being afraid of pushing things too far.

They probably could increase incoming unavoidable damage if they weren't so dead set on the strict DDR fight design heavily punishing players for taking avoidable damage too

Healers keep getting new heals, but still in a vast majority of fights Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis is the most cast spell and used more than all healing spells combined.

And they do so little damage it barely counts as a contribution.

[Azurarok]

dangit that came across kinda backwards.

I meant that the kinds of damage we have to deal with can be managed by more or less the tools we've always been given near the start, so basically anything they've given us beyond that are essentially just there to reduce how often we need to use those early GCD healing tools.

[CaptainLagbeard]

It's kind of a problem from many different sources...

We keep getting more oGCD heals to cast less GCD heals, and there's very often with a good enough group nothing to heal.

And so it just turns into being different flavors of Glare Mage.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It’s part of the reason why back in EW SCH’s Expedient was pretty well received when it’s revealed to not be ‘just another heal button’. ShB to EW SCH—at least in healing front, were done better vs their 3 siblings.

Then again, who knows if that was a mere fluke in the sea of mediocre decisions they’ve made. We do know they’re sort of ‘throwing wet towel & see which one sticks’-in those times. Then today, we’re back to ‘healer means they get new heal button lol’-approach.

[Kacho_Nacho]

It's kind of a problem from many different sources...

We keep getting more oGCD heals to cast less GCD heals, and there's very often with a good enough group nothing to heal.

And so it just turns into being different flavors of Glare Mage.

Absolutely. As healers, we don't need these oGCD except when we need to move. So, bosses have become exercises in how well you can move your character.

But, if everyone is doing their dance right there is no need for the oGCD heals. It's a real catch-22 situation and we know CS3 isn't about to overhaul every duty and raid to correct it. Because with the amount of work it'd require, they might as well start a whole new MMO.

So, healers are stuck. Honestly, thinking about it, I don't see CS3 changing anything for healers in 8.0.

I mean, what can they do? Add another damage ability on a two minute countdown? Combine our heals so we have more space on our action bars?

The basic problem remains. Healers are both redundant and boring to play.

[ForsakenRoe]

I mean, what can they do? Add another damage ability on a two minute countdown? Combine our heals so we have more space on our action bars?

The basic problem remains. Healers are both redundant and boring to play.

Giving us a button that we press more than once per minute (or once per 2min if you're SCH/AST) would be a nice start. I think their insistence on the stance of 'healers shouldn't feel like they're forced to do damage' is hamstringing them in so many ways that they themselves might not even realize. Just accepting the idea that, if we're going to have 90% of our gameplay time in certain content be 'do a damage action', and adding more damage actions to fill that time with more variety, well, the creativity will naturally start flowing more, and they'll likely find all sorts of 'new' ways to expand the Healers and make them feel distinct from one another again

Consider how much more active SGE would feel if Psyche was a 30s, 300p attack instead of a 60s, 600p attack. Same damage, but you use it twice as often. Or what about if we go a bit crazy with it, and have it as 150p and 15s CD, with 2 charges to help avoid overcap? And hear me out, what if we then also had it then synergize with the rest of the kit, eg by making it trigger an instance of Kardia healing? And this would then synergize with Soteria, by allowing you to get through its stacks faster and thereby push out more healing when it's needed, and then what if...

So we can see, from a single idea, an entire design can bloom, by just following the 'and then' chain and seeing what comes of it.

Take me for example. I'm just one forum user, but I had a crack at reworking the Healers to spice up the gameplay anyway, because, well, I thought it'd be fun to try. Take the SGE idea, I began with nothing more than the idea of 'I think it'd be cool if Kardia was an actual system to optimize around', yet after a lot of 'oh and this would be cool' feature additions/revisions, the final form of the design has ended up being a fast-paced, RPR-Enshroud-having hyper-offensive (read: appeals to a DPS player mindset) Healer job that simultaneously has a very high skill ceiling, but also being incredibly low-floor/forgiving due to having no MP cost on any of its basic GCDs. Would it be well received? Maybe, I dunno. I imagine there'd be some who'd dislike it, and some who'd like it, just as is the case for every job in the game. But I'd rather gamble on 'a non-zero number of players might dislike it' than the current 'play it safe by changing almost nothing, every time' we have been getting for some years now.

Still waters grow stagnant. The Healer role's lack of changes mean that it, and the associated gameplay experience, is growing stagnant. Dropping a single pebble (the new attack button) into the water once per 2 years is not going to cause enough disturbance to prevent the stagnation of the water, we need either a much larger pebble (eg big changes at expansion time) or pebbles to be dropped in far more often (eg updates every patch, and no I don't mean 'Dia increased by 5' kind of changes)

[Aravell]

I think their insistence on the stance of 'healers shouldn't feel like they're forced to do damage' is hamstringing them in so many ways that they themselves might not even realize. Just accepting the idea that, if we're going to have 90% of our gameplay time in certain content be 'do a damage action', and adding more damage actions to fill that time with more variety, well, the creativity will naturally start flowing more, and they'll likely find all sorts of 'new' ways to expand the Healers and make them feel distinct from one another again

They're not even actually following their stance that they keep reiterating. Week 1 savage clears are mathematically impossible with the healers both doing 0 damage, so healers have to be doing damage anyway.

Also the changes that they made past HW have been making it easier and easier to deal damage as a healer, so the community will start pressuring healers more and more to spend all their GCDs on damage spells.

I still believe that if they wanted healers to not be forced to do damage, they'd keep the old system where there's actually a danger of wiping when you force the healer to do damage.

[ForsakenRoe]

They're not even actually following their stance that they keep reiterating. Week 1 savage clears are mathematically impossible with the healers both doing 0 damage, so healers have to be doing damage anyway.

I mean, it's probably possible to clear the last fight of a Savage tier, without Healers doing damage. It just requires:

A: The team is playing at an incredibly high skill level, to be able to take advantage of raidbuffs etc. to deal enough damage to offset the lost damage from the Healers not doing any

B: Enough gear from Tome capping, reclearing the first 3 fights for Shines/Twines to upgrade that Tome gear, and at least 8 clears of the 3rd fight to get everyone the 'Tome Weapon Upgrade Gloop (tm)'.
This process would take literal months

C: Requires the Healers to literally 'play wrong', and I don't just mean 'because they're not doing damage', but instead, 'not using certain tools because they include damage'. For example, a WHM can't use Assize even for healing or MP restoration, because it might clip the boss. An AST can't Star or Macrocosmos. A SGE can't use Pneuma without a target. When the argument is 'can Healer do no damage and still clear', that should mean literally zero. This would also mean no SCH Chain or AST Cards/Divination as those provide damage of a sort

With all of that, it'd still be a very tough battle for any raid tier that isn't the current one (as this one was undertuned as all heck). But wait: the Raid Finder's Minimum Item Level for any given tier's final fight is 'the same item Level as the Crafted equipment of that patch', not the Item Level of the gear dropped in the Savage raid. So, clearly SE believes that 'Crafted set is enough to clear the tier and not be a liability to the team'. Only way that is possible is... if the Healers do damage too.

[CaptainLagbeard]

C: Requires the Healers to literally 'play wrong', and I don't just mean 'because they're not doing damage', but instead, 'not using certain tools because they include damage'. For example, a WHM can't use Assize even for healing or MP restoration, because it might clip the boss. An AST can't Star or Macrocosmos. A SGE can't use Pneuma without a target. When the argument is 'can Healer do no damage and still clear', that should mean literally zero. This would also mean no SCH Chain or AST Cards/Divination as those provide damage of a sort

Yea the argument definitely isn't about avoiding damage at all costs, but more of just standing there doing nothing instead of spamming their one attack while waiting for the boss to do raidwide damage.