#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Shialan]

Thanks for the engagement, friendo! Another spark, another flame, keeping the fire going!

Do you really think "engagement" is all that's needed?

[Rosenoire]

I personally don't have an issue with self-heals on a tank. It's when they are so ridiculously powerful as to render the healer useless is where I take issue. The other problem is abilities like Bloodwhetting allow a WAR to heal themselves to full without having to tradeoff their DPS. It is so asinine to me that this even got green-lighted in the first place, and then they actually double-downed on their self-sustain. I'm still over here running my fingers through my hair, mystified.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't even know how someone can play such a busted-arse job with any kind of fulfillment of doing actual tanking.

In my experience, WAR only "renders the healer useless" in some dungeon content. I just ran Dead Ends and being a WAR wouldn't have saved me from dying to the Dooms on the first boss. As I noted previously, I couldn't prevent a wipe on Proto-Carby once the healers went down.

That said, I do find it baffling that Shake it Off got a healing effect, and that Bloodwhetting is "TBN only with heals!" when DRK had Abyssal Drain as our only straight up "press here to heal" button. WAR seems to be the golden child when it comes to tanks, though.

[aiqa]

In my experience, WAR only "renders the healer useless" in some dungeon content. I just ran Dead Ends and being a WAR wouldn't have saved me from dying to the Dooms on the first boss. As I noted previously, I couldn't prevent a wipe on Proto-Carby once the healers went down.

That said, I do find it baffling that Shake it Off got a healing effect, and that Bloodwhetting is "TBN only with heals!" when DRK had Abyssal Drain as our only straight up "press here to heal" button. WAR seems to be the golden child when it comes to tanks, though.

With a little practice you can easily avoid AoE's that apply Necrosis (the Doom like effect) at the first boss of Dead Ends. Not a good sign when the first expample too show why healers are only useless in some dungeons only applies when players mess up a mechanic. Sure when your team messes up often enough, they'll need a healer in any dungeon. This is the main problem with encounter design, most of the times healers could be useful can be completely avoided by gaining a little more experience with the encounter.

[Turtledeluxe]

With a little practice you can easily avoid AoE's that apply Necrosis (the Doom like effect) at the first boss of Dead Ends. Not a good sign when the first expample too show why healers are only useless in some dungeons only applies when players mess up a mechanic. Sure when your team messes up often enough, they'll need a healer in any dungeon. This is the main problem with encounter design, most of the times healers could be useful can be completely avoided by gaining a little more experience with the encounter.

This also means there may be an inverse relationship between expansion lifespan and healer being fun. As players get more experienced by repeating the newer content, you're going to see less mistakes theoretically.

Still bad design imo, when mastering content just means more fun and more expression for certain roles.

[aiqa]

This also means there may be an inverse relationship between expansion lifespan and healer being fun. As players get more experienced by repeating the newer content, you're going to see less mistakes theoretically.

Yes, that is what happens with the current encounter design combined with ever stronger heals from other roles (mostly tanks). But the bar for that can be pretty low in dungeons. As seen in the video about the first DT dungeon without a healer, the players got many vulnerability stacks and the WAR didn't use team heals anything near optimal, and they still got through it without much difficulty.

[Turtledeluxe]

Yes, that is what happens with the current encounter design combined with ever stronger heals from other roles (mostly tanks). But the bar for that can be pretty low in dungeons. As seen in the video about the first DT dungeon without a healer, the players got many vulnerability stacks and the WAR didn't use team heals anything near optimal, and they still got through it with much difficulty.

True, it would only really apply to the amount of content that is fun for healers in the first place.

[Rosenoire]

With a little practice you can easily avoid AoE's that apply Necrosis (the Doom like effect) at the first boss of Dead Ends. Not a good sign when the first expample too show why healers are only useless in some dungeons only applies when players mess up a mechanic. Sure when your team messes up often enough, they'll need a healer in any dungeon. This is the main problem with encounter design, most of the times healers could be useful can be completely avoided by gaining a little more experience with the encounter.

Sure, with practice, but in a party with a mentor who hasn't run it in months, and two sprouts running it for the first time, of course someone's going to mess up a mechanic. A dungeon run where everyone executes every mechanic perfectly is a rarity in this--or any--video game. Designing around the assumption that players are going to be a) experienced and b) perfect seems like a approach that's guaranteed to fail.

[Minali]

Sure, with practice, but in a party with a mentor who hasn't run it in months, and two sprouts running it for the first time, of course someone's going to mess up a mechanic. A dungeon run where everyone executes every mechanic perfectly is a rarity in this--or any--video game. Designing around the assumption that players are going to be a) experienced and b) perfect seems like a approach that's guaranteed to fail.

Maybe, just maybe, there is space inbetween "all players are the worst and don't know anything" and "all players play perfect" and they could try to balance around that spot in the middle of these two extremes?

[Rosenoire]

Maybe, just maybe, there is space inbetween "all players are the worst and don't know anything" and "all players play perfect" and they could try to balance around that spot in the middle of these two extremes?

Sure, but the person I responded to was arguing that healers only have relevance when players screw up, and once they learn the fight then healers have nothing to do.

Once again, I'm not saying that there aren't issues with healing that should be addressed. I'm saying that "healers aren't needed because other roles have too many self-heals" is not generally the case, at least in my experience. Healers are always going to be needed because even WAR can't survive certain mechanics. I absolutely support healers getting a better DPS rotation, and changes to encounters, especially in higher-end content, to make healing a more interesting role. I'm not in favor of taking away the self-healing for tanks as a solution to the problems with the healing role.

[Aword3213]

Sure, with practice, but in a party with a mentor who hasn't run it in months, and two sprouts running it for the first time, of course someone's going to mess up a mechanic. A dungeon run where everyone executes every mechanic perfectly is a rarity in this--or any--video game. Designing around the assumption that players are going to be a) experienced and b) perfect seems like a approach that's guaranteed to fail.

Aren't hearlers always have GCD healing to fall back to whenever this happens?

First, GCD healing spells are very powerful
GCD healing can easily heal non-tanks back to full health rather easily and quickly. (Healers already have passives that increase healing output as they level. )

Second, mechanics in normal contents aren't frequent enough
In normal content, mechanics only happens so fast. We have ample time to recover from mistakes between each mechanics. No matter how clumsy you are, you just can't possibly die when there's nothing happening. By the time next mechanics happens, most oGCD healing abilities are already back online.
(Assuming you weren't talking about ex-trials, which aren't supposed to be cleared by people who don't bother to learn the fight to begin with)


Third, you don't have to be full HP at all times.
Incoming damage in normal content so low that you don't have to heal everyone to full in preparation for the next mechanic.
Boss enters cutscene. Boss does cool animition with murderous dialogue. AOE comes out. You lose 20% of your total HP and that's it.

Third, sprout healers tend to spam Succor and Medica
From my biased experience and observation, sprout healers tend of rely heavily on GCD healing in any given situations.
GCD healing serve as both their panic button and go-to button. How does adding new healing abilities on already bloated healing kits expansion over expansion really help sprout healers? They still cast Succor/Medica most of the time. Perhaps teaching them how to heal by adding some level of introdution and tutorial duties would be better? Then we can finally make healers engaging to play, which also benefits both casual and elite healers, no?

Fourth, How much longer are we going to use players that fail every possible mechanic as an excuse to simplify healers any further?
We're almost at 7.0 now. This thread is about 90+ contents and job kits. Shouldn't you expect players to have basic understanding of common mechanics when they're doing level 91 contents? Even if players happen to fail, just retry and do it again. Not everything should be done in first try.

Fifth, how much deeper should this rabbit hole go concerning Accessibility?
Wouldn't giving invulnerability actions to every job in every role helps casual players tremendously? Why stop at healing abilties when you can do better than that? How about giving every job the ability to raise teammate? Surely that can reduce healer anxiety by a mile. There, I did what Yoshi-p has always wanted to achieve.