#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Moonjava]

Which circles back to the problem that a job shouldn’t only be semi decent in ultimate content

I’ve easily cleared savages with half my kit outhealing my cohealer, all I do is spam broil. My job shouldn’t only semi engage me in literally 5 fights in the entire game

There are ways to raise the skill ceiling in all content without raising the skill floor, the skill ceiling shouldn’t be in a different piece of content

If you're only engaged when facing ultimate-level content, then I'm sorry to say the game is probably too easy for you to fully enjoy. Maybe you and your cohealer can alternate who gets to heal and who has to just DPS during savage so you both get to have fun at least half of the time.

The only way I can imagine raising the skill ceiling in easy content without raising the floor would be to add more options for DPS, which, again, I think is a reasonable request but one that's unlikely to be met by SE (not to any significant degree, anyway). I struggle to see a way to make the healing side of things more engaging without meaningfully raising the skill floor.

[Nanobiscuit]

SCH’s lost so much of its identity we are at the point of people arguing we should lean more into its identity but doing exactly the opposite of what its actual identity is

And people say healers don’t have an identity crisis



Yes I think it’s perfectly valid to say healers are awful because “HEALING” amounts to pressing sacred soil every 45 seconds between my constant broil casts, I’m not gonna minimise the monotony of that

Is the complexity you're talking about using macros to cast Eos spells in different situations? or the casting 3 dots? Because unfortunately, most healers haven't been complex since the dawn 2.0. I can agree that the manual use of Eos spells (and choosing selene or eos) was complex, I guess? I don't think it added much to the identity of the job, it just felt obtuse. If the healing you're doing is only sacred soil between broil, I think the problem lies in the content, not the job, I've done hard content where I do use everything and think it's fine and dare I even say fun.

[OliviaLugria]

I mean, content becoming more boring with repetition and optimization is true for all jobs. That's just a function of the fact that FFXIV fights are entirely scripted. I don't disagree that it's more of an issue on healer and doing DPS could be a bit more engaging, but insisting that healers are all boring and awful because long stretches of just doing DPS is boring is willfully ignoring, y'know, the whole "healing" thing. In my opinion, the fun of healing is in that mit plan creation and CD optimization you mentioned- that aspect of healing remains, it just unfortunately isn't all that applicable in normal content.

As many have said, the baseline complexity of every other role keep those jobs interesting regardless of content. Repetition and optimization is endlessly fun on some jobs like black mage and monk, but others, mainly healers, become a solved puzzled that remains very surface level. Furthermore, unlike other jobs, as our team gets more gear, the less healers have do, pushing us more into the barebone dps rotation.

Despite the harder difficulty, you can't deny that a large portion, a majority even is spent focusing on dps. Your goal to heal effectively stems from the need to push dps.

Adding more dps options, or an intricate buff and debuff system, factoring in movement constraints, or whatever interesting mechanic the devs could implement doesn't take away from the fun parts of healing and planning, but fill in for that fun when the content doesn't allow for it to happen. When healing is a part of the picture, it creates an even more intricate encounter that is harder to solve and more rewarding when you do so.

[SamLeens]

Do they though? Do they really? And let's make a couple assumptions. Let's assume casuals are a huge portion of the player base, why is only healer the ultra-casualized role in the game on every single job? If this is such a big deal, then why aren't there more jobs in the DPS role that are just SMN? How does it make sense that all 4 healers need to have the simplest rotation possible to cater to casuals? Why not just one healer? This is why this line of thinking will never work, because it doesn't make sense. It raises a lot of questions that you, nor anyone else, is going to have convincing answers to. "Casuals" is not being used an excuse to reduce every other role in the game to what healer is right now, so why are healers special in that this gets to be used as a defense for their current design?

Casuals play longer while raiders often stop playing the game as soon as the savage or ultimate content is done.
You think that healers are "casual" but i know ppl who say that healers are too complex for them. they go and play a dd and only do 1,2 ,3 and are happy with it. if you are lucky they found the 4th button for aoe dmg, but thats really rare. they will clear every single story dungeon and normal trail with 1, 2, 3 and no one cares.
now you think its smart to give a healer a rota. why should a class that works on demand have a fixed rota when the dmg intake is not a fixed rota? And i mean the other 3 or 7 ppl in your party that spontaneously might die or need healing. why do i need the "oh no. dont get hurt. dont die! im in my 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 rotation! i dont have time for that! Other healer, do something!" and the other healer will tell you that they dont wanna interrupt their rotation either.

I think we can say with certainty it is not the content. We know this because tanks, DPS, and healers all do the same content. If one of the three roles is experiencing that content in an incredibly different and negative way then the problem lies between the role and the content, not the content itself. A good example is: let's say a piece of content requires barely any healing, well, if healers had a somewhat engaging rotation to do while not healing, then they will not be as affected, but if their only gameplay is 2 1 1 1 1 [...], then the content becomes boring for the healer, but may be fine for a tank and a dps.

Aha. So when i dont need to use my def cds in a dungeon, then its the tank and not the dungeon? makes no sense, but okay.
the fact that a lot of the content works with only 1,2,3 and nothing else and it doesnt even matter what class you are playing is also with "certainty not the content"?

"only healers have boring content bc they dont have so many buttons to press". i cant agree. imagine even as a gunbreaker i was often bored. i switched to healer becuase they can react spontaneously and dont have to follow a boring rotation.

[OliviaLugria]

You think that healers are "casual" but i know ppl who say that healers are too complex for them.

I can understand why they feel that way when 90% of the buttons on their bar aren't actually useful for the content they play.

[PercibelTheren]

Do harder content.

I HAVE. The only harder content I haven't touched yet is Ultimate. The most fun I had healing in the entirety of Endwalker was progging Thordan Unreal, which I feel says a lot.

Extreme and Savage are only challenging for healers during prog when things are going south and sometimes in reclears in PF with clueless randos, otherwise it's a snoozefest of Excel sheet gaming where all you do is try to remember how you scheduled the mits with your co-healer and spam 1-1-1. You still don't use 75% of your kit.

I ended up taking over doing callouts for our FC static because at least *that* gave me something to do.

[SamLeens]

I can understand why they feel that way when 90% of the buttons on their bar aren't actually useful for the content they play.

No. Its too much because they have to deal dmg and heal the party. they dont like the idea and prefer playing a dd bc he only has to deal dmg and nothing else.

[KageTokage]

Doing harder content does not magically fix the issues with tanks/healers when said content has been done with one healer or no healers at all.

There is still not enough damage going out to stress their kits even in ultimate, which is why I feel extremely hesitant to think that's suddenly gonna change in DT.

[PercibelTheren]

Can I just ask a very simple, but serious question? And this isn't specifically targeting you, but many people whose answer is the same...

Why is asking for all of a game's content to be fun seen as such a silly request? Like, does that not sound insane?

What happened to video games being about fun? If easy content isn't supposed to be fun and is just supposed to get you to the hard content, then why does it even exist at all?

In a way, I find it reminiscent of when someone tells me a game is amazing only in lategame. Cool, so I have to be bored for who-knows-how-many hours before I get to have fun? Why would I want to do that, exactly?

[Moonjava]

As many have said, the baseline complexity of every other role keep those jobs interesting regardless of content. Repetition and optimization is endlessly fun on some jobs like black mage and monk, but others, mainly healers, become a solved puzzled that remains very surface level. Furthermore, unlike other jobs, as our team gets more gear, the less healers have do, pushing us more into the barebone dps rotation.

Despite the harder difficulty, you can't deny that a large portion, a majority even is spent focusing on dps. Your goal to heal effectively stems from the need to push dps.

Adding more dps options, or an intricate buff and debuff system, factoring in movement constraints, or whatever interesting mechanic the devs could implement doesn't take away from the fun parts of healing and planning, but fill in for that fun when the content doesn't allow for it to happen. When healing is a part of the picture, it creates an even more intricate encounter that is harder to solve and more rewarding when you do so.

Again, I understand the desire for more DPS options. SE has designed healers to be very oriented around heals, so their DPS rotation is lacking, so when there's no need to heal, it gets boring. I get that. I just don't think it's realistic to expect or demand any kind of genuinely intricate rotations or buff/debuff systems for healers, especially when SE apparently has gotten enough feedback stating the current AST card system was so overcomplicated that they felt justified in paring it down as much as they did.

The underlying problem here is that most fights aren't doing enough damage for the folks in this thread, so they're stuck DPSing more than they'd like, and DPSing on healer is boring. My beef is with the way this is being framed as all healer jobs being awful terrible garbage that are incredibly boring and unfun and pointless in all content with a million buttons that all do the same thing, when that's not the case.