#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Kes13a]

I've been thinking more about the concept of role identity for healers in FFXIV compared to other MMOs I've played over the last 20 or so years and I think I've come up with some points that haven't really been thoroughly discussed here yet. I've spoken before on the problems with healers and what healers should be in this thread, but there's a gap between "What's wrong with healers/what should healers be?" and "What are scenarios in FFXIV that illustrate how healers in this game differ from healers in basically every other MMO?" So, here's some illustrative questions.

Healers:

1. Do you regularly spend more time healing your party than DPSing?
2. Have you ever died to a mechanic because you were desperately trying to heal someone?
3. Do you frequently feel like you need to make a conscious choice on whether or not to cast a healing spell, knowing there would be repercussions if you chose poorly?
4. Do you frequently feel you need to carefully manage your resources (MP, class points, etc.) to prevent your party from dying?
5. Have you ever failed an encounter because your party lacked enough healing output despite your party not failing critical encounter mechanics (e.g., a "healer gear check")?
6. Do you commonly have a non-healer in your party sacrifice DPS in order to prioritize your safety?
7. Are you ever concerned that your healing may accidentally draw threat/aggro, leading to your death and/or a party wipe?
8. Do you feel like a vital member to the overall encounter effort instead of just someone to "clean up others' mistakes"?

1. no. Unless it is a very very bad party, they happen.
2. well, yeah, I often watch health bars and I have rng feet... so... if someone needs it, I may be about to die
3. no, not really
4. no, as a WHM? only time its even close to an issue is low level stuff where I am glaring my heart out
5. no.
6. if I am the non-healer and see something attacking the healer, yes, all the time.
7. pretty sure they did away with that, if they havent then, no
8. not usually. in the occasional alliance raids if the other parties healers are having issues, then yes, then I do.

[Turtledeluxe]

As a WHM main I want to thank everyone here for making my queues even shorter.

Thank you for the bump and the morale boost to continue onward.

[OliviaLugria]

As a WHM main I want to thank everyone here for making my queues even shorter.

If you ever find yourself tired and falling asleep playing your job, and want it to be better, we're right here.

[Colt47]

I think saying ''no one cares about savage'' is just as harmful as the high end players saying the equivalent of ''no one cares about dungeons or casual content''. Saying ''raids are a waste of time to develop'' is objectively wrong, it's an area of content in the game for some players, just like how there's deep dungeons, fishing or whatever else that I personally do not care for, but recognise the value of it.

It's harmful and all you're doing is incentivising people who prioritise savage to dismiss your arguments or issues with the game. I say this as someone who cares for both sides of the game, I want better for everything.

Ironically, healing is problematic in all levels of the game. It's far too boring in casual content due to the low or non-requirements of having to heal, leaving healers essentially as casters with a one button rotation. In high end content, healing isn't as interesting or nuanced as you expect due to encounter design forcing one-shot or party wipe mechanics on the party if you make a mistake. Healers are essentially there to spam their DPS button and heal the party after the scheduled 30-60s raid wide, and if someone makes a mistake on a mechanic, it's a guaranteed wipe in most cases.

Is healing more enjoyable in high end content? Absolutely, at least you are needed and actually have things to heal every 30-60s and need to manage your cooldowns, but it still goes back to the same issue across the board: you're stuck spamming your one DPS button for 9/10th's of your GCDs, which is really boring.

So to the other parts of your post, I agree, add more outgoing damage or harder hitting mechanics, add unique role-based responsibilities for mechanics (i.e cleansing, dooms, etc) and most importantly (IMO), give healers an actual DPS rotation akin to tanks in a game which expects every single role to optimise damage above all else.

TL.DR - every level of content matters, make shit a bit harder, give healers an actual DPS rotation since we are also casters and not just healers since this game expects everyone to do damage.

I mean the truth is savage IS the stranger in the overall reality of FFXIV. In terms of time to learn the fights it is so much more taxing than anything else it is jarring. Basically, the learning goes from an hour maybe on normal mode, to about a day or two for EX, and then it just jumps to weeks on end for anything involving savage raiding, with even the easiest savage usually taking close to twenty hours or more to complete for most people who do the content. FFXIV would be better off having scalable challenge systems over something like savage, but it got shoehorned in.

I mean... they literally got a core customization system locked behind a difficulty curve with this. It's the lowest level of low someone could have for providing a carrot on a piece of difficult content someone can get.

[BunnyQueen]

Someone is having posts deleted???

[Wildheaven182]

Yeah, I am exaggerating. I really just mean the content that most people do should be the priority. But you could also analyze it based on subscription time. I don't think there should be a huge gap between normal and savage content anyway.

That is a big criticism I've always had, is that there is so much wasted content in FFXIV. Old stuff, often old stuff that only gets half baked and then gets left in the dust and never again touched while they develop the next new gimmick. That's an unsustainable model and it doesn't harmonize with running an MMO either. Replayability is majorly important. More important than variety even and what we see proves it.

Binding coils of bahamut. Make them not... weird and weirdly difficult. Along the lines of HW normal raids difficult. And put them in raid roulette. Heck, you can certainly trim plenty more fat off of ARR to make these required content instead of all the fluff. ARR being a bad impression on new players is an issue and this could be a fix for those who don't know the carryover story from 1.0.

Deep dungeons, I feel they never really caught on, or at times when they did was because they were the best option for levelling at the time.

Grand company squadrons. They can definitely make that AI actually workable now if they can make the trust system AI dungeon runs that they do now. Squadron command dungeons are pretty nightmarish unless you're on tank so you can just solo it.

Field operations need some work. I think it's just hard to get invested in a new exclusive system of doing things when it only applies to this one part of the game. I think that's the main problem that people say they feel Field Operations are missing.

Island sanctuary. People had this idea of like, Valheim or minecraft or something. But gathering in FFXIV is walking to a gathering point, clicking on it, and watching a loading bar. It was never a good idea to focus on a weak point of the game's framework.

Criterion dungeons are the latest example of a new side thing introduced then left in the dust. No one knows what to do with them.

But yeah. Revive dead content and you multiply things to do in the game, and the game needs things to do. Expert roulette having only two possible dungeons is... sad.
You might die in the wiping city of mhach but if you got it a fraction as often as you get syrcus tower in roulette, you'd be complaining about how easy it is too as an example. Spread out the roulettes for more variety in the normal content diet. It will actually train players to be better at the game, since accommodating bad players is such a concern.
And I don't mean bad players who dont have a lot of time to play or whatever. I mean plot watchers and rpers who don't want to do battle content at all, they just want access to those spicy new rp venues or to see the latest silent movie cutscene of Thancred still being sad about Minfilia.

They could learn something from the Rathalos raid fight. Attacks that don't require stiff floor aoe indicators, it feels so much more natural when you watch for a natural looking wind up animation of the enemy. You can predict what the rathalos is going to do just by watching how it moves. It's better than the "stand in the right spot" DDR we get.

[OliviaLugria]

Not balancing older content is a huge detriment to their game. The ways most people experiance older content and leveling in general just makes it a huge waste.

[Tunda]

I wish bard was a healer

[Oizen]

i wish fisher was a caster

[OgruMogru]

i wish fisher was a caster

oof that one left me reeling