#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Neldorath]

all roles should be exciting ;I really agree with you.
I don't know which is preferable, the GCD heal or the other damage button, but I would definitely be happy to spend more time on 11111 and do more of my own actions to make a positive change in the game.

That's the crux of the issue with healers in my opinion, because neither DPS nor healing GCD buttons are interesting. In a perfect world, SE would be able to make savage and ultimate level content that require very heavy AND diverse healing profile. That would include heavy raid-wide healing which is mostly what we get now, but also heavy spot healing on non tanks, spread healing on 2 or 3 players, more consistent bleeds and overall more low intensity but constant damage coming from bosses and/or mechanics. However, it is very likely impossible to implement this kind of boss design as the slow GCD of this game would not support this type of playstyle.

This is why we healers are asking for interesting damage rotations instead. Since the servers operate at a slower tick rate and since the GCD in this game is much longer than most other MMOs out there, it seems that the only interesting thing SE can do in terms of gameplay is add more depth to damage rotations rather than healing requirements.

I for one would be happy with either, but certainly not with what we currently have.

[Evergrey]

I wouldn't really look at th is 1 to 1. For starters, this is a video game not workers striking for fair pay and safer working conditions etc. Nobody should be shunned or bullied for deciding to queue as a white mage, or to help their friends get through a story trial etc.

Second, there's no picket line to clearly and publically see people crossing it anyway. So who's even going to know unless people are constantly checking their friends lists and policing each other based on who's in what duty as what job etc.

I"m not saying not to do a healer strike. If people want to unsub or just not queue as healer to protest, go right on ahead. That's perfectly fair. But I wouldn't really expect the social aspects of this to play out like a real world strike at all.

I'm just looking at it as people here who support it really feels like it's a big deal to them.
So I thought I'd just look at it as a more or less real strike.
Where those who take part of it wants to do their part to prove a point.

[Bun_Vivant]

If you want a strike, do it 100%. Don't make expections for friends and such.
That just really looks bad.

There's no reason to go that extreme. No one is obliged to queue for DF, much less to queue for DFs as a particular role. If people only want to heal their friends, that's their prerogative.

Me, best case for this strike, my six EoC SGE (and some of the other iL640 SGEs I have) will be enjoying the increased demand for DF healers that a reduction in supply will produce. #FFXIVHEALERSCABS for the win! #FFXIVRIGHTTOHEAL!
Worst case for this strike, where weather has more impact on healer DF participation than the strike does, I'll still be just fine.
Either case, I don't expect SE to care much, and even if they do, it will be years (literally) before they change anything substantially -- that's just the way it is in MMO development. Are you strikers going to stay on strike that long?

What's your conditions for ending the strike?
If you don't have any, don't expect SE to make an effort to appease you.

[Evergrey]

Yes. Those two are the main problems. We want at least one problem fixed. If both get fixed, that would be even better.

If healers had 5-10 damage buttons, it would be more interesting to play most content as a healer now that there isn't much need to heal.

Or if healers kept the same damage buttons but there were more opportunities to heal, we would get to actually use all the healing spells we have and not be pressing the same damage spell repeatedly. Tank and dps jobs would need their heals nerfed or removed so that they can't heal all the damage.

Imagine if it was like D&D, or other RPG's, where Holy Spells damage Undead creatures.
Not that there's enough Undead creatures in FFXIV to make a healers toolkit interesting to use in a fight.
But maybe have some kind of effect that if using a healing on an enemy it could either damage or debuff them, supporting the group that way.
Different healing spells could apply different debuffs/damage.
Not only would that give the healers more to do during a fight. But it would also make it so the healers might have to think "Should I hit this enemy or do I have to save the Cooldown incase the tank doesn't avoid the Buster?".

[OliviaLugria]

It'll be pretty easy to continue to not play healer.

[Evergrey]

There's no reason to go that extreme. No one is obliged to queue for DF, much less to queue for DFs as a particular role. If people only want to heal their friends, that's their prerogative.

Me, best case for this strike, my six EoC SGE (and some of the other iL640 SGEs I have) will be enjoying the increased demand for DF healers that a reduction in supply will produce. #FFXIVHEALERSCABS for the win! #FFXIVRIGHTTOHEAL!
Worst case for this strike, where weather has more impact on healer DF participation than the strike does, I'll still be just fine.
Either case, I don't expect SE to care much, and even if they do, it will be years (literally) before they change anything substantially -- that's just the way it is in MMO development. Are you strikers going to stay on strike that long?

What's your conditions for ending the strike?
If you don't have any, don't expect SE to make an effort to appease you.

I'm simply implying that if there are those individuals who really wants to commit to this strike, they shouldn't make exceptions themselves.
If someone goes "strike! strike!" but then doesn't commit to it, it looks bad.
That's all I'm saying.
Ofc it's up to each individual how dedicated they want to be to the cause.

[Bright-Flower]

When it comes to some jobs having too much healing/mitigation, I think I agree overall.

I think that say, dancer is fine with its little heal and shield. But then yo u have say, warrior and paladin. My paladin can solo a lot of dungeon bosses without a healer and even potentially keep dps alive through use of clemency and other tools if the healer dies and the dps aren't flubbing too many mechanics. It's a tricky line to balance. Because on the one hand, it's cool that palaidn has a LIMITED aiblity to heal. But while it can be cool to say, keep the party alive as a paladin for the last chunk of a boss fight if the healer(s) go down, it feels like it's gone a bit too far for some jobs. A healer going down in a dungeon should be more impactful than 'oh I guess I just need to slow my dps a bit so I can throw out some clemencies on the dps' etc.

And I 100% agree healers need more dps buttons. They don't need a full, complex dps rotation the way a DPS job does. But they need more than 'dot, nuke, aoe, and maybe a couple other buttons on short cooldowns.'

For spending very little time healing though, I have an honest question for healer mains. Coming from someone who heals only in casual content. Dungeons, alliance raids, normal mode trails/raids etc. Are you really spending THAT little time actively healing in high end content? In the casual content I do, the healing is usually pretty relaxed...until people start making mistakes. Which happens a lot in casual duty finder content. People flub mechanics and need raises, and then healing once they're up so they don't die to the next aoe. People take non required damage all the time. Tanks doing wall to wall dungeon pulls don't always use their cooldowns optimally, or the aoe dps is lagging behind and said cooldowns are running out before the mobs are dead, or someone stood in the wrong place a couple times and has vuln stacks etc. In my pesronal experience, the idea of 'you barely ever have to touch a gcd heal' is not a universal truth but a sign of a clean run. And when doing raids/trials with randoms there's rarely any coordination on who's doing what or when except for the occasional raise macro. When people say this, are they talking about all content? Or when they're doing content with their statics? Is it only during farm or also during prog? Is it all the time that you run into this or is it just high end content with a static etc?

To be clear I"m not questioning healer mains on this. This is just someone on the outside who heals casually in casual content asking an honest question, I'm not saying healers are wrong or that I know better, because I really dong as again I only casually heal in casual content.

[Jojoya]

Have you ever heard of Our Lord And Saviour, The Blood Lily, Afflatus Misery, per chance?

I don't have anything to heal so the Blood Lily can be fed. This group knows how to stay out of avoidable damage and the tank keeps self-healing automatically.

It's bad design if we're stuck using oGCDs in a wasteful fashion in order to get to a powerful damaging ability for the lack of anything better to do.

Imagine if that tank wasn't doing any self-healing. Mitigation might reduce damage taken but not eliminate it completely. It would start to add up and I would have a chance to feed my Blood Lily in the proper manner.

The problem is not healer damage or healer toolkit design. The problem is the lack of damage going to the party for healers to heal. The problem is other jobs being able to self-heal through their standard rotations so what little there was to heal gets taken care without healer assistance. The developers are designing combat jobs and content as if healers do not exist.

[Kayokane]

I don't have anything to heal so the Blood Lily can be fed. This group knows how to stay out of avoidable damage and the tank keeps self-healing automatically.

It's bad design if we're stuck using oGCDs in a wasteful fashion in order to get to a powerful damaging ability for the lack of anything better to do.

Imagine if that tank wasn't doing any self-healing. Mitigation might reduce damage taken but not eliminate it completely. It would start to add up and I would have a chance to feed my Blood Lily in the proper manner.

The problem is not healer damage or healer toolkit design. The problem is the lack of damage going to the party for healers to heal. The problem is other jobs being able to self-heal through their standard rotations so what little there was to heal gets taken care without healer assistance. The developers are designing combat jobs and content as if healers do not exist.

Rapture is a better spell for tight movement than Slide Casting Glare is, it also helps with MP management on 0 Pie, mid/high SpS builds... by all accounts the only wasteful way to use Lilies is to let them over-cap because theirs nothing to heal.

[Post]

And yet, we've had more interesting healer design challenges in the game before, much earlier in its life.

Brayflox challenged SCHs to heal a boss that stacks poison without an Esuna.

t1 remains one of the hardest hitting bosses on tanks in the game, relatively speaking, requiring melee DPS to bait the bosses to swing just to stop auto attacking the tanks and catch up, as well as challenging healers and ranged to stay spread for platform coverage (and enough heals able to reach everyone).

T5 asked healers to heal through a healing debuff tankbuster, allowing clever players to make use of Lustrate (then %hp healing) and Stoneskin to circumvent the effect, and light party stack aoes that would interrupt your heal if not surecasted or properly timed.

Ifrit EX likewise dealt incredible, withering tank damage and unhealable group damage if not controlled, and gave healers tricky movement to consider that would be moot in today's environment due to heal range and mitigation buffs.

Leviathan dealt burst damage to one tank and steady damage to the other, punishing any direct heals (including AoE) on one with a reduction in their range stacking until healers could not cast on others at all if improperly managed.

T8 allowed healers to decide to dispel a constant tank DoT or just manage it with throughput, managing Allagan Field with group tower strategy and shields aside.

T9 would sneakily target one player with an extra Meteor Stream for the healers to catch, only truly threatening one players' life if the group was on point.

T10's Prey (origin of the raid term, too) actually required shielding specific players on reaction, something we don't have in an era where supposedly they design with both types of healers in mind.

A2s was probably the only fight that Deployment Tactics on the removed Eye for an Eye was relevant.

Mhach 2nd boss and A11s require shields in advance to save players getting their HP dropped to 1, something removed by bosses not auto attacking for a very generous period while and after casting now.

T13, A12s, and hell, a11n, all target specific non tanks and blast them repeatedly in a short time frame that requires serious attention, and we managed that crap fine when we only had GCDs and one oGCD heal. We're way more equipped for that kind of thing now, especially with every tank having a solution to it at least every 25 seconds.

They can and have made healing have more interesting, or at least more varied, problems to solve. Some of the steps taken since then, like AoE heal range, make it harder to revisit some challenges (solo healing Thordan Unreal should not be as easy as it is), but they're not currently being limited by their GAME engine, of all things.