#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[TheDustyOne]

It's actually really important to think of balancing as something that is addressing content in its most virgin point - before gearing becomes too easy and the progression is saturated with Echo buffs. Again, this is not me saying it's "wrong" or "less legitimate", but it does make fights a lot easier.

Whenever content becomes too easy - and this is actually a pain point in FFXIV, stuff becomes way too easy with time, mostly because of intra and extra-patch power creeping - healers are definitely the ones that feel it the most. Having to effectively heal and plan mitigations is core part of the Healer gameplay in FFXIV; cut that out of the role flow without putting anything in it's place but a few Glares and some Biolysis and you make it the most dull and boring role. That much is true.

But, then again, balancing can't address that - if they were to balance down jobs every few weeks, there would be no feeling of progression overall. If they were to make healer DPS rotations harder, then the role would be saturated with responsibilities in early prog points, such as week one/week two progressions. If they were to remove or dampen the ability of self-healing from other roles, they would become too dependant. That dependancy would also become an issue in the long run.

So, as I see it, gameplay-wise, healers are in an "OK" spot. It just gets really awful as content becomes older, even within a patch.

Similar responsibilities are also on the tank in those early weeks to mitigate properly. Yet those tanks also have an engaging DPS rotation, WAR may be simple, but it still has 2 combos, a Gauge, 3 primary cooldowns, and a big burst button. The most "complex" healer doesn't even have half of that. The same damage healers heal is the same damage that tanks mitigate.

Reverse the roles for a moment, let's just say tanks only had 2 attacks, maybe 2 cooldowns, and the rest was all mits that you didn't need, and think if it would be okay for me to say "if they make tank DPS rotations harder, then the role would be saturated with responsibilities in early prog points". Savage content is already content where people should be comfortable in their jobs before they tackle it, so that responsibility is normal, every job has it.

Balance may be important, but fun should take precedence. People play unbalanced but fun games, but not dull balanced ones. Ideally we would be both balanced and fun (ironically, we don't have either).

[LalaLumi]

I'm going to take it none of you with this most ludicrous opinion regarding "healer simplicity" has ever done a single end-game content in your life. Based on the Lodestone of the characters of the first page alone I can guess most of you probably never even stepped into a Savage fight, dare say Ultimate. Maybe Extremes. Maybe.

This is not to say that the "casual dungeon leveling experience" is to be disregarded but it's definitely not the main focus of job balancing in FFXIV. There's harder content where you actually have to heal people and your damage does matter. If you're taking your metrics from dungeon running and FATE trains then I'm sorry to inform you that's not what the game combat is mainly designed for. Watching a tank (a warrior, specifically) survive mob pulls with his own devices will not make you any less useful - rather, that gives you room to effectively help clearing mob pulls with the actually pretty good Healer AoE DPS. If playing with players with varying skills bothers you, you can always go to your Island Sanctuary and do Housing, though. Maybe RP. That kind of content also exists.

Though I must say I like this post because of what it shows - a community, even if niche, getting together to try and find a common ground with development. The action is respectable, though the reasoning behind it is... mildly questionable.

I do nothing except raid in savage+, and I'm VERY dissatisfied with healers, even there. I'll concede DSR or week 1 on anything (since that's the only time healing is fun), but TOP is an absolute joke for healers. We are not needed. It is the only job in the game that actively gets more boring the better you are at it. All I exist for, even in the hardest content the game has to offer, is allocating long cooldowns at set intervals, topping up raidwide damage, and smashing glare. In high end content, your DPS actually matters. A LOT. In dungeons, sure the tank can practically solo the entire thing, but at least I can entertain myself by watching netflix. In high end content, though? There is such an emphasis on dealing damage, particularly in ultimates, that there is seldom if ever a focus on healing, and that's precisely the problem here. As a healer, damage should be a luxury, not a mandatory 250 GCDs of glare or else you're cooked. Meeting DPS checks should be the DPS's job and I should be there for reinforcement. The issue is that EVERYONE is a DPS in this game, and there are seldom any meaningful healing checks. If the game is balanced around DPS being the end-all-be-all of existence, why even bother having healers in the game? Why bother making the distinction? Why not just have everyone play WAR and PLD and have the would-be healers swap to SMN and RDM to clear the hardest fights in the game? Oh wait...

[Elexander]

I do nothing except raid in savage+, and I'm VERY dissatisfied with healers, even there. I'll concede DSR or week 1 on anything (since that's the only time healing is fun), but TOP is an absolute joke for healers. We are not needed. [...]

The issue lies not in the role, but in the game design - again, healers are fine as they are, but the game simply does not challenge the role enough because of how the raid mentality works.

Fights in XIV are designed after a puzzle solution kind of mechanic: There's a win condition; if the win condition is met, mild to no damage is taken by the party. If the condition isn't met, high, possibly unmitigable damage is taken by the party. Whenever such mechanic happens, the boss then uses either a body check mechanic or an incidental heal check mechanic - AoE damage or some generic debuff/buff count - that might result in a wipe depending on the win condition having been met or not. Usually, healers might be able to save a party by using their kit accordingly in the former situation (AoE damage after mechanic) under certain circumstances and power levels.

There are little to no actual heal check mechanics in this game that are heal checks by design. A few examples of that I have in mind are Living Liquid's Splash -> Cascade scenario, TEA's J-Wave enrage or any Savage+ Akh Morn instance in the game, really. These mechanics have but one solution: to mitigate and heal through it. More mechanics like that might help healers fill their uptimes with GCD heals, but is that really desirable? Is that actually good encounter design? I, for one, don't think so.

Saturating a fight with plain AoE damage won't make it harder, just annoying. It's simply forcing healers to press AoE heals just for the sake of it.

Then again, we have another problem: most tank busters in this game allow for invulnerability cheesing. They have been trying to solve that with stackable bleedings and similar solutions, but that also displaces Invulnerabilities. For example, in P8S, invulns are not necessary in any moment during the first phase of the fight, mainly because the boss doesn't allow for their usage in Tank Busters - so they're just left there to be used to correct a mistake if possible.

Invulnerabilities should be made necessary for certain mechanics, not just a smart solution. That would make tank busters a healer-tank team solution rather than just placing it on the shoulders of a single party.

One fight with good healer encounter design that could be taken as an example is The Omega Protocol's Phase 01. Healers have to discuss their healing priority and keep individual members alive throughout the phase with constant damage instances while also solving their part of the mechanic, not excluded from the rest. That, along with some O4S phase two healer-conditional mechanics and Debuff removal mechanics (!! really important, barely used) such as in TEA's Phase 01 and healers will actually have active challenges.

[Rsmeers]

"/party Hello! and thanks for joining. This macro was built in case you never used the 4-T strat.
/party Dodge Rathalos attacks as much as possible. Use CDs and skills to heal yourself and avoid using potions until phase 2.
/party Don't pull ads other than the Coeurl; let Rathalos kill them and when marked approach them to hit them.
/party We gotta decide who's going to tank Garula and who's going to mount;
/party For phase 2, stack alone in the edges (so fire puddles won't bother us) and use potions as needed.
/party If a person who ran out of potions gets marked for stack, feel free to use lb.
/party Also, before the fight begins, I'll use a buffed Shake It Off to protect us from roar."

This is a Macro for Rathalos Extreme I created back when it debuted on v4.36, released on August 2018. Literally six years ago. People using the 4 tank strategy were the fastest ones to get all the rewards. This will probably come out as rude, but this shows just how little about the game people complaining about a healer not being needed for an optimal MSQ dungeon setup know for a fact. But anyway, with how badly people usually play on pubs, you need not to worry. Healers are not an ounce more useful or useless than they've always been.

[Rolder50]

"/party Hello! and thanks for joining. This macro was built in case you never used the 4-T strat.
/party Dodge Rathalos attacks as much as possible. Use CDs and skills to heal yourself and avoid using potions until phase 2.
/party Don't pull ads other than the Coeurl; let Rathalos kill them and when marked approach them to hit them.
/party We gotta decide who's going to tank Garula and who's going to mount;
/party For phase 2, stack alone in the edges (so fire puddles won't bother us) and use potions as needed.
/party If a person who ran out of potions gets marked for stack, feel free to use lb.
/party Also, before the fight begins, I'll use a buffed Shake It Off to protect us from roar."

This is a Macro for Rathalos Extreme I created back when it debuted on v4.36, released on August 2018. Literally six years ago. People using the 4 tank strategy were the fastest ones to get all the rewards. This will probably come out as rude, but this shows just how little about the game people complaining about a healer not being needed for an optimal MSQ dungeon setup know for a fact. But anyway, with how badly people usually play on pubs, you need not to worry. Healers are not an ounce more useful or useless than they've always been.

To be fair, Rathalos is a bad example because it has a whole phase where you literally cannot heal other people and have to use the potions. And that was to make it more accurate to Monster Hunter to keep it on theme.

[Rsmeers]

To be fair, Rathalos is a bad example because it has a whole phase where you literally cannot heal other people and have to use the potions. And that was to make it more accurate to Monster Hunter to keep it on theme.

If Rathalos Extreme is a bad example, then so is an under level cap MSQ dungeon. My point is if the people who are complaining about this right now knew more about the game and were long time players, they'd know it's not something new and has never really been disruptive to the gameplay loop as they're claiming it will be all of a sudden.

[Rolder50]

If Rathalos Extreme is a bad example, then so is an under level cap MSQ dungeon. My point is if the people who are complaining about this right now knew more about the game and were long time players, they'd know it's not something new and has never really been disruptive to the gameplay loop as they're claiming it will be all of a sudden.

And saying that people are only starting to complain now is disingenuous, because healers have been complaining about this since the launch of Shadowbringers. It's only now that we're getting some kind of actual traction on the issue.

Examples: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-healer-issues -Started 05-09-2020

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-play-Ultimate 02-19-2022

Etc. This is NOT something that just came up all of a sudden.

[aiqa]

they'd know it's not something new and has never really been disruptive to the gameplay loop as they're claiming it will be all of a sudden

Nobody is claiming it's all of a sudden. The healer problems have been brewing for years. And there have been huge discussions about the healer role for years. If nothing is improved some of that discontent will eventually spill over. That will most likely happen after some trigger (in this case, the reaction to DT), but that doesn't mean the trigger was the underlying cause for the "sudden" complaints.

[HighlanderClone]

"/party Hello! and thanks for joining. This macro was built in case you never used the 4-T strat.
/party Dodge Rathalos attacks as much as possible. Use CDs and skills to heal yourself and avoid using potions until phase 2.
/party Don't pull ads other than the Coeurl; let Rathalos kill them and when marked approach them to hit them.
/party We gotta decide who's going to tank Garula and who's going to mount;
/party For phase 2, stack alone in the edges (so fire puddles won't bother us) and use potions as needed.
/party If a person who ran out of potions gets marked for stack, feel free to use lb.
/party Also, before the fight begins, I'll use a buffed Shake It Off to protect us from roar."

This is a Macro for Rathalos Extreme I created back when it debuted on v4.36, released on August 2018. Literally six years ago. People using the 4 tank strategy were the fastest ones to get all the rewards. This will probably come out as rude, but this shows just how little about the game people complaining about a healer not being needed for an optimal MSQ dungeon setup know for a fact. But anyway, with how badly people usually play on pubs, you need not to worry. Healers are not an ounce more useful or useless than they've always been.

Why do patently false takes like these get spread all over the place?

No one was doing 1T3D runs in Pharos Sirius. People also didn't think doing 1T3D runs in dungeons like The Burn was worth it.

This is unlike in DT when it is both efficient to do so and also simple as long as you know how to use your tank CDs.