#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[OliviaLugria]

Would it really be that bad to let these hypothetical casuals fail sometimes? Let them die once or twice. Maybe have a built-in way to nudge them in the right direction. Force them to learn at least the complete basics. If they wanna play XIV like it's a singleplayer story game, that's fine. But most singleplayer RPGs are way more challenging than this, even on story mode.

Follow up on this:

What if the game started kinda easy, but progressively got harder as you got further into the game. Not only that, but if you were struggling with a mechanic or a concept they had some nice in game explanations of what is going on?

[xbahax92]

Follow up on this:

What if the game started kinda easy, but progressively got harder as you got further into the game. Not only that, but if you were struggling with a mechanic or a concept they had some nice in game explanations of what is going on?

It's good that you mentioned this, I saw something similar on the jp thread. As an example, during lv50-60 content, you will surely meet tanks and dps with (leveling) bad gear and inexperience.
But the more you progress and the more you level up to 90, the game gets easier. Not only the healer kit becomes more stacked, but simply we're being overgeared and do less mistakes. (ofcourse it implies casual content, not mandatory endgame stuff)

[PercibelTheren]

Follow up on this:

What if the game started kinda easy, but progressively got harder as you got further into the game. Not only that, but if you were struggling with a mechanic or a concept they had some nice in game explanations of what is going on?

That would be the perfect way to solve this, imo. I understand we need to onboard newbies who have never played an MMO before. You don't see me calling for Sastasha being hard. I'm really happy that reworked old dungeons now showcase some of the mechanics that become common in higher level content. But since there is so much time to get used to them, I think they should progressively get more dangerous with each level.

Again, I'm not asking for MSQ dungeons to be super hard, but forcing at least a little bit of a learning curve on even the most casual players wouldn't be that bad. You really shouldn't get away with going in as a duo into lvl 80+ dungeons where the tank never does AoE and the healer only spams Medica II (I have seen this happen, I was a DPS, it was painful to watch).

[OliviaLugria]

Once again, I'm not denying healers can be boring and have little to do in solo/normal content. I am arguing against the assertion that they are fundamentally boring and pointless, because that's just not true in harder content.

The real trouble is that SE did try to address this exact feedback about healing being boring with Abyssos, and it went terribly for them- they increased raidwide damage significantly, and in response, healers quit en masse. They have little reason to try again only to face that backlash again. That said, I would posit that mit skills being upgraded pretty much across the board (for healers, tanks, and DPS all) might suggest they may be planning to increase raidwide damage again for Dawntrail, and all this doomposting may be premature. One can only hope we'll all be pleasantly surprised.

"Please improve solo/casual content"
They address the issue in Abyssos? As I said in a previous post it's not a healer mechanic alone. The mitigation healer is only going to account for half of the total amount of mits being applied to any one mechanic.

And premature? I've been waiting 2 soon to be 3 expansions to get back the things they took from scholar back in stormblood. You say these mit skill upgrades mean increasing raidwide damage? I heard that last expansion and the one before that. I have no reason to think it'll change this time. We currently have a bloated healing kit. If they "increase the damage of raid wides" but also increase the defensive utility we end up in the same place, a bloated healer kit.

[Mortex]

Just stop complaining and dps to make dungeons go faster. Idk people expect healers to actually have to heal in dungeons if I can get away with not casting any lilies in a dungeon or 24 man I am happy. If you want more engaging healing go do savage or ults cause you ain't getting it in dungeons.

Lilys after you get blood Lily’s is a dmg gain in the 76 to 80 ranges and dmg neutral/gain with buffs from 82-90. Like people having no clue about this and saying they are happy not casting them in these lvl ranges are muppets plain and simple. And like people said that did Ulfs and savage healing there isn’t better because you can Spreadsheet the entire role as you can with mits.

[Mortex]

And now we circle back to "do harder content." If you're making it through ultimates by using Soil every 45 seconds and clicking Broil otherwise, I'd love to meet your cohealer.

His co healer plays sage and together they can over mit any heal check. “But they have to use adlo spread in down time or once or twice in the uptime reeee” .

[Mortex]

Abyssos problem was the raidwide bleeds were controlled by the initial hit damage

Why am I a “shield” healer when I get 3 mitigations (for the purpose of a bleedwide succor and seraph aren’t mitigations because they don’t change the bleeds damage) and the rest of the party collectively has another 15

I had no control in abyssos no matter how much I begged people to press their mitigation, they never did but they always blamed me when the raidwide shredded their health

If you want me to be the shield healer give me the mitigation not give it to the SAM who’d rather drift it then argue with me for 10 minutes over just pressing it when I tell them to press it because I gave them my mit plan

Abyssos was the messiest and most healer hostile way they could increase healing because it gave healers all the blame but none of the control

In a static the fight was a bit challenging healing wise but in pf it was just pure booty cheeks.

But that happens when you don’t give mits to the healer and rather to every one else.

But that really does drive in how as healer you have to cleanup other people’s messes.

[DivineP]

For most of my time playing this game, I thought I was alone in thinking that healer gameplay was a little... braindead, for lack of a better word, in the vast majority of content. Pretty much all dungeons boil down to casting your AOE shield/regen, spamming your one attack for the situation, and repeating. The only thing making them exciting while leveling is the prospect of getting new toys as you progress--once you hit max, the appeal quickly fades. I've been a healer/support main in pretty much every MMO I've ever played, and XIV probably has the worst overall experience of them all. Either our kit is too strong for healing to be interesting, the sustain of other classes is too strong for healing to matter, or our DPS """rotation""" is too one note for healers to have any complexity outside of simply healing. Whether it be one of, a combination of, or all of those three reasons, the result is a role that is borderline unplayably dull and certainly not fun or engaging in nearly any situation.

And to think, I JUST finished leveling all the healers to 90 for DT...

Oh well, at least I leveled the tanks too.

#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

Totally agreed.

[DivineP]

Just to add, not necessarily on topic, that healer does need..something.

I did roulette in Ronka and the healer randomly died on the first boss with 80% left hp. Nobody could raise. We still cleared the boss easily, with the DRK able to self sustain the entire fight.

If this is the case, why can’t we just do roulette with 3 dps instead? If you are going to have a healer role, make them crucial for success.

Is the logic that, they are afraid of giving healer too much pressure (“if you die, we all die!”)? So that if a healer dies it’s not that big a deal?

The solution is make damage hit hard enough that you can -at best- maybe skirt by about 10-20% of a boss hp bar without a healer. And just give other jobs raise abilities, even if it has a really really long cooldown. He’ll give bard/dancer/mech a 5 min cooldown raise even. Let the healer die, but make it crucial to get them back up.

Some dungeons have bosses hard enough to need a healer..but most do not. Most non dungeon content doesn’t even need a healer (like deep dungeon).

So, why is that?
As is, if the tank goes down, you can kinda survive until they get raised, but it’s hard to do 80% of a boss without one. Why not the same for a healer?

Soooo this. Just goes to show the roles redundant at this point.

[Galvuu]

Soooo this. Just goes to show the roles redundant at this point.

Very low challenge on most content, extremely formulaic/scripted design that becomes trivialized once you learn the dance (not even necessary in most dungeons, just recognize the recycled patterns/mechanics), unbalanced role actions/self-mit, stripping of all fail states on jobs and encounters... seems about right.
A perfect storm of very low challenge, repetitive design, and role and job homogenization.
I think if you told people some ARR endgame dungeons used to have actual enrages/heal checks that people could fail until they learned them properly and that all roles had to pull their weight in their respective areas, a player that started in ShB might not even be able to conceptualize that. A dungeon that's not criterion having difficulty...?