#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Katish]

Those are pretty far from normal dungeon run times... If it was purely a case of heals not being needed, it should be faster than a normal 1t, 1h, 2d run at Min ilvl (dungeons don't have echo) because you're replacing the lower damage healer with a DPS.

No actually, it was faster have you tried min ilvl? Min ilvl is BELOW questing gear, and your level is synced to the minimum for the dungeon, you have to manually queue for it. Another thing is, I had to hold as DRK to prolong the invuln any other tank would have made it go that much faster, and even then it was faster...now with the new sustain I might not even need to wait in LD. Which means, at 90+ drk can satisfy continuous damage like the other tanks. So the point does get it across quite well, as I chose drk for being the squishier tank. Any tank can full pull without a healer...And the more sustain, the less need for a healer obviously, the less need for a healer the quicker the dungeon. This not limited to only dungeons though, I ran some healerless extremes as well. Waiting for those uploads....quickiest extremes ever, right before maintenance.

[Isala]

"Excessive oGCD heals. These are not only abundant, but exceptionally powerful. This in addition to self-sustain on other roles reduces the dynamic of healing comrades."

Again, this point's issue isn't the idea itself, but the lack of convincing argument about what changing oGCDs will impact. It needs to address potential consequences of such significant changes and a more detailed concept of re-balancing.

Do you want those abilities removed? Or just nerfed or reworked?

How will that impact the MP usage of each healer if they're no relying more on normal GCD heals? And considering the manifesto's request for more DPS, would the removal/nerfing of oGCDs potentially lead to excessive MP drain?

"Lack of engaging content outside the most difficult duties (Savage/Ultimate). i.e. the threat level is too low."

This is where the manifesto feels contradictory. It spent several points claiming healers want more DPS and less heals, only to end by saying they want to heal more and for things to hit harder.

If the threat level and damage is vastly increased, won't the oGCDs you were demanding to be rid of be more necessary?

And if the damage output is increased and the bosses more punishing, how does that impact the ability to balance healing through that damage with the potentially longer/more complicated DPS rotation that was asked for earlier?

~~~

All of this is what I mean when I say the manifesto feels too vague to me. Sure, it's making demands and listing complaints, but offers no deeper analysis or argument that would help convince people of the apparent cause. It repeatedly lumps together abilities that aren't similar at all, demands reworks and redesigns without addressing the consequences of such changes, and fails to provide detailed examples of how the changes they want would work for the better.

It's not a contradiction. The issue with the threat level being too low is because we have 100 oGCDs to top everyone off, that are always up (provided good CD management), and there is no actual usage of anything resembling an actual healing SPELL in the vast majority of situations. We spend, as people have shown, WITH DATA, around 60% of our entire time pushing the same single GCD button, and that's just god awful gameplay.

[ty_taurus]

"Over simplified DPS rotation. Every job in FFXIV has a 'filler GCD' skill that they press when there are no other requirements. No role in the game pushes this skill more than healer. Not by a long shot. Our offensive capability should still feel dynamic and rewarding. Yes, we are healers, but we are also casters"

The problem here isn't really in the desire, but rather the lack of cohesive and developed vision of what certain healers want to see.

Do they want longer combos? How long? How complex?

Should there be more buttons? Should Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis change into different attacks as you use them, like how several of Pictomancer's casts do?

Could more abilities do both damage and healing, like how Assize and Earthly Star do? Or are those part of what's being criticized?

And will that added DPS require overall readjustment of damage/healing outputs on the jobs? After all, if they do too much DPS, it will shorten encounter time and decrease threat level, which is what the manifesto later claims it doesn't want.

These are all factors that need to be considered. But the manifesto fails to do that. Instead of one or a few cohesive ideas developed by the entire group, it's random ideas thrown around that are hard to follow and even contradict each other at times.

Well, we have four healers, so they shouldn't be approaching DPS the same way anyway. Rather, they should each approach it in their own way just like the other jobs do. There's not a specific right answer here. If anything, it's more an ask of "anything that isn't this," but it should also feel appropriate of a caster.

For scholar, for example, there does seem to be a moderate consensus which is the restoration of DOT gameplay. But the other healers shouldn't just copy that. There should be a range of styles and levels of dedication to DPS that includes one that's more simple to one that's more complex. Sage was given an identity closely associate with DPS, so it should try to be more ambitious about feeling like a caster DPS. On the flip side, having a healer that's still simple is important as well, but I think we could have a simple healer that still is able to have a little more than just glare spam.

At the end of the day, we are not the designers. It isn't our responsibility to create the specific solutions, but whatever happens, I just don't want this, yet we've been stuck with nothing but this for now 5 years. I'm not interested in enduring it for another 2.5 years. If it changes before then or when 8.0 releases, then I'll be there, but until then, I won't be. I think that's a sentiment that's shared by many people at this point.

[WeakestZenosEnjoyer]

This is where the manifesto feels contradictory. It spent several points claiming healers want more DPS and less heals, only to end by saying they want to heal more and for things to hit harder.

Less heal buttons directly means more energy spent actually thinking about healing as you have to properly manage your limited resources,

playing a healer in Stone Vigil and then playing a healer in Vanasparti? makes this really really obvious. Even if there's high incoming damage playing a healer still isn't interesting if our mere presence resolves it.

[Morgana96]

It's not a contradiction. The issue with the threat level being too low is because we have 100 oGCDs to top everyone off, that are always up (provided good CD management), and there is no actual usage of anything resembling an actual healing SPELL in the vast majority of situations. We spend, as people have shown, WITH DATA, around 60% of our entire time pushing the same single GCD button, and that's just god awful gameplay.

Again, that doesn't help anyone understand what you want to see happen.

Do you want more DPS and for the game to take away certain heals? Do you want more reasons to use the heals you have, but also still do more DPS? And would overall DPS output have to be adjusted if that happened, since more DPS causes fights/encounters to feel faster/weaker?

Do you want the enemies to hit harder so those oGCDs feel worth it? Do you want the oGCDs to be less potent or to have longer cool downs so that they don't feel so excessive? Do you want them gone completely and to solely rely on GCD instead for heavy damage? And if you do want just GCD, how will that impact MP levels and a potential addition of a healer DPS rotation that also uses MP?

What is a "fixed" healer to you? And does it actually match up with what a "fixed" healer is to everyone else involved in this strike?

It's a lack of answers to questions like these that causes the manifesto and the overall strike to feel contradictory to many. One person in this thread will demand one thing, only for another to demand the exact opposite. There's not enough organization and collaboration happening in this group to take it seriously as a strike or protest. You want to convince people you're right, but aren't working together in presenting the necessary arguments and answers that will help prove you're right.

[ty_taurus]

How much time you spend on healing has little to do with how many healing actions each healer has access to, because the need for healing is determined by the amount of damage your party sustains, unlike DPS where new GCDs and cooldowns add variety and volume to your gameplay regardless of the state of battle. The only way to influence the amount of time healers spend on healing through their healing actions would be to weaken them so that we aren't capable of restoring the party to full in 1-2 healing actions anytime damage is taken. That's the biggest difference between WoW healing and XIV healing: WoW healers don't have massively powerful AOE heals. It's not generally every player who takes damage at once, but a set amount of players, and the healers more often than not heal up those players one at a time rather than all at once. This is a very generalized summary of WoW healing of course, but it speaks volumes that something like Medica, which is such a weak heal in XIV that it basically is never used anymore, would be utterly broken in WoW.

Removing certain healing actions has more to do with reducing bloat where some healing actions are repetitive or do very little to compliment a particular healer's healing style. I've used the example that Astrologian's Bole and Spire are very redundant when Astro still has access to Exaltation and Celestial Intersection which are both objectively stronger than Bole and Spire, and also have shorter cooldowns individually. Sure you can stack Bole and Spire on top of those, but why do you need that? It's excessive and unnecessary. Trimming down unnecessary healing allows the rest of the healing to have more value, and it also lessens the burden of knowledge on especially new players to remember all of those effects.

[Amity_Roji]

This is where the manifesto feels contradictory. It spent several points claiming healers want more DPS and less heals, only to end by saying they want to heal more and for things to hit harder.

This has been heavily discussed before - including this post here, that outlines why there's a focus on healer DPS additions, what the causes of the healer problem are, and defines what healers should be - but let's simply things:

Healers: "Yo Squeenix, can us healers...uhh...heal more?"

Squeenix: "No."

Healers: "Sigh, ok. But can we at least get some kind of DPS rotation to keep us entertained while we're doing all this not-healing?"

Squeenix: "Also no. Here's some pretty graphics; now go pound sand."

All of this is what I mean when I say the manifesto feels too vague to me. Sure, it's making demands and listing complaints, but offers no deeper analysis or argument that would help convince people of the apparent cause.

Yeah, but that's just one person's take and they just got the ball rolling, so to speak. There's been hundreds - maybe thousands - of posts in this thread analyzing the healer role in excruciating detail from every angle throughout this thread. That said, this shouldn't matter - we do not need to know how to fix the problem in order to know that there is one. The fixing part is Squeenix's job. They're literally game designers. The purpose of the strike and the discussion around it was to draw attention to the fact that the healer role has been devalued for three expansions now and that those of us who play the role expect and deserve better.

EDIT: Let me preempt some things too:

Here's a response to "But your strike is just ruining the game for everyone else/you're intentionally hurting other players' experience!"

The eight questions that illustrate why FFXIV healers are broken compared to other MMOs.

[Aidorouge]

Striker I am for the 1029591069286026020692471 time begging you to not take every single sentence as an attack on everyone else

I eventually gave up and put them on ignore, at this point they're being deliberately obtuse and obnoxious that I just assume they're trolling the thread now.
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Common opposing arguments and their answer:

"Your strike has failed!" > You never understood the actual goal of the strike.
"You can be replaced!" > Good. Pop my queues for me.
"Play some other job then!" > Already have.
"I/My friends don't see anything wrong with healers." > Good for you, you're free to enjoy them.
"123 isn't any different than 111" > Literally where did anyone ask for a 123 combo?
"The forum is a minority!" > Well so are you, by nature of being on this forum.

Worth noting as well that regardless of queue times, it's still objectively true that the number of people playing healer would have dropped. Sure, "contented" healers are still there, but we know ex-healers have walked away from the role, versus having no idea how many of the called "new" healers actually stepped up or were all bluster (especially so given how many of those particular folks had no healers close to 90 or even unlocked, lol). Admittedly the total amount of healers actively queuing/playing is a metric only Square-Enix can see, but they *will* see it, for better or worse.

[Myrany]

I eventually gave up and put them on ignore, at this point they're being deliberately obtuse and obnoxious that I just assume they're trolling the thread now.
+++



Worth noting as well that regardless of queue times, it's still objectively true that the number of people playing healer would have dropped. Sure, "contented" healers are still there, but we know ex-healers have walked away from the role, versus having no idea how many of the called "new" healers actually stepped up or were all bluster (especially so given how many of those particular folks had no healers close to 90 or even unlocked, lol). Admittedly the total amount of healers actively queuing/playing is a metric only Square-Enix can see, but they *will* see it, for better or worse.

I don't think not having a healer at 90 is a good enough reason to discount someone as long as they have leveled some on the healer. I have NOTHING at 90 despite playing over 5 years. My highest healer is in the 70's I think. Stopped playing it.

Also not everyone posts on their main character. When I started posting on the forums Myrany here was my main. As of last expansion that changed but rather than muddy waters about who I am by posting on a different character I just stuck with Myrany.

[Isala]

Again, that doesn't help anyone understand what you want to see happen.

Do you want more DPS and for the game to take away certain heals? Do you want more reasons to use the heals you have, but also still do more DPS? And would overall DPS output have to be adjusted if that happened, since more DPS causes fights/encounters to feel faster/weaker?

Do you want the enemies to hit harder so those oGCDs feel worth it? Do you want the oGCDs to be less potent or to have longer cool downs so that they don't feel so excessive? Do you want them gone completely and to solely rely on GCD instead for heavy damage? And if you do want just GCD, how will that impact MP levels and a potential addition of a healer DPS rotation that also uses MP?

What is a "fixed" healer to you? And does it actually match up with what a "fixed" healer is to everyone else involved in this strike?

It's a lack of answers to questions like these that causes the manifesto and the overall strike to feel contradictory to many. One person in this thread will demand one thing, only for another to demand the exact opposite. There's not enough organization and collaboration happening in this group to take it seriously as a strike or protest. You want to convince people you're right, but aren't working together in presenting the necessary arguments and answers that will help prove you're right.

You're actually proving our point far more than you realize. Because every single option you listed there would be accepted as FAR better than what we currently have. If we had more DPS skills, we could stay busy. If we had less oGCD heals, or less potent heals, we'd need to heal more, also staying busy. If the mobs hit harder, or did more damage, we would again, stay busy. Managing MP, meaning situations where we had to watch what spells we were casting would also bring more engagement to the job, and is also a common thing that healer have to do in literally any other MMO.

Every single one of those things that you think are "contradictory" to what we're asking for? Those are EXACTLY what we're asking for. We are asking SE to pick one. Pick SOME way to make it so that healer is not the absolutely braindead slogfest it currently is, even in Ultimate content. The claim that "Healers are engaging" in Ultimate has been proven to be yet another lie, by actual Ultimate raiders in this thread. Every role does the same mechanics, but unlike the other roles, healers don't get engaging gameplay while doing content.