#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Banriikku]

Why is the healer role in a very bad shape?

My take:

How does healing work in FF14?
It's "binary" or simply put "enough or not". The "... or not" part means the player dies and the encounter ends (if the whole group dies) and so the first part "enough ..." means survival and the player continues the encounter.

Now, how do encounter work?
We take here, as example for simplicity, an 8-Man Raid. In this raid there will be a boss in a arena shaped most of the time in a square or a similar shape (rectangle or circle). The players engage with the boss and mechanics like movement in a certain manner, direction and/or position and also, depending on difficulty and encounter, buffs and/or debuffs while the player try to reduce the HP of the boss to 0. Mechanics are triggered by time and/or boss hp.

This results in a dance like a choreography with timed positions and behaviour. This behaviour ranges from touching other players, staying away or reaching a certain point in the arena and/or getting hit by the boss and/or players. Based on this we can assume everything is timed and/triggered and will follow a learnable pattern. RNG is extremely rare and most of the time reduced to a option of a pattern instead of coincidence. All these information leads to the conclusion that every boss is a pattern recognition test and this leads to, for the healer role specific, healing only on specific moments in the fight. That means healing itself is only "needed" in a short specific moment of a full fight.

Now let's turn to the reward structure. The reward structure is very simple "kill it fast". The reward between, if we assume for the sake of the argument, that the fight last at maximum 12 minutes, a fight after 50% of the possible time and a fight after 99% of the possible time, the rewards are the same. There is no difference in how much time the player used in the end. Furthermore, all rewards are based on "defeated enemy". Simply put "kill it, get reward".

My conclusion:
Fights are predetermined, only the kill gives a reward, healing is only "threshold healing" or "binary".

With this i came to the conclusion that healers are in need of a DPS kit because they are designed to have one but are denied one for unknown reasons. Everything points to “on point healing”, particularly with the extremely powerful tools from tanks and dps players.

With on point healing, only healing if necessary and only in the amount needed because there is no rewards or necessity for a different behaviour, there is a dire need for a tool-kit to use in this designed "healing down time".

The demand for more healing is with this job/encounter design not possible without breaking the system.

Dear SE please do one of two things:
1. change the design of fights and the binary healing or 2. give healers a dps kit.

[Connor]

[CENTER][B]

Dear SE please do one of two things:
1. change the design of fights and the binary healing or 2. give healers a dps kit.

I mean, #1 requires a complete redesign of every fight to have ever existed. #2 requires they copy+paste dps spells from previous expansion over the top of a bunch of healing abilities lol. Given how the devs often take the laziest path forward, I think it’s fairly obvious which one they’re going to do when the time comes.

[Aravell]

I think it’s fairly obvious which one they’re going to do when the time comes.

Do absolutely nothing and hide behind the shield of ignorance with "We didn't get any feedback about this"?

[Connor]

Do absolutely nothing and hide behind the shield of ignorance with "We didn't get any feedback about this"?

It’s definitely a possibility lol. There’s also option #4 of ‘takes feedback then implements the most inappropriate fixes one could ever think of’ I.e another 120s cool-down attack or buffing tank healing lol

[CaptainLagbeard]

The "feedback" they listen to is going to be "bad players are bad at healing" and to fix that, they buff tanks.

[Supersnow845]

The "feedback" they listen to is going to be "bad players are bad at healing" and to fix that, they buff tanks.

And somehow their response to feedback of “bad players are bad at tanking” is also to buff tanks

[Alice_Rivers]

Almost like the devs don't like healers/healing.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Almost like the devs don't like healers/healing.

I don't think they hate healers.
I think they forget they exist until they need to design new skills for the next expansion.

[OliviaLugria]

I don't think they hate healers.
I think they forget they exist until they need to design new skills for the next expansion.

Not that they spend a lot of time designing new skills for healers >.>

[Willemdarke]

So, how has this been going? I've not kept up with the thread in quite a while and it's been a few hundred pages since I last checked it, lol.

Personally, I leveled WHM and SGE mostly through dungeons and fates and I didn't notice them feeling any different, aside from the WHM dash, which is nice, but inadequate when compared to, say, what PCT got. I've mostly played damage dealers so far, but even then nothing really feels fun, exciting, or new (I mean, I liked VPR, but playing it still kinda feels like all the rest).

I know no healers have gotten sweeping changes (aside from AST cards) and the new damage buttons are forgettable fluff at best, but how are heals feeling in the harder content when accounting for the newly faster paced mechanics?