Why Are Healers Not Allowed A Gameplay Loop, Anyway?

[LilimoLimomo]

I don't think the fact that the tank role is barely distinguishable from the DPS role is laudable, nor is it something we should strive to reproduce with healers; rather, I think we should acknowledge it as a deficiency that these two roles are homogeneous to this degree.

Healers certainly have problems, and I agree that increasing the number of damage options is a good idea to make down-time in easier content less dull. But going so far as to use the DPS role as a model for the solution moves us further away from truly fixing healers, instead settling for the crumbs of turning healers into Red Mages with Esuna and Medica.

And if we go that far, I honestly think we should just abandon the pretense that FF14 has roles. Just make every class a DPS, and whoever wants to heal can use healing abilities and whoever wants to tank can use tank stance and defensive cooldowns.

I suppose if folks have given up on the idea of role diversity being possible for FF14, I can't fault them for that. Over time we've seen things become more and more about DPS, we've seen the responsibilities of healers dry up more and more, and so I can see why someone would lose faith that the developers will ever change course. I can see why someone would come to feel that wanting something truly great is hopeless. And so instead of advocating for greatness, they advocate for something that would at least make things tolerable. That's not unreasonable.

But that's not the path I want to go down. I don't mind being able to deal some hurt, but when I play as a healer I want my experience to overwhelmingly be one of keeping my party hale and hearty. So that's what I'll keep advocating for. And with any luck, in the job identity revamp of 8.0, we'll see something that pleasantly surprises us.

[Zolvolt]

THis might not be a popular opinion but I wish that esuna saw a little more use.
Did you know in ex1 if no tank soaks the mountain buster than everyone in the raid gets a debuff that you can esuna? It's the only time esuna shows up in the fight. But your tanks have to both be dead or off in la la land to even see it. Seems weird.

[KisaiTenshi]

This argument only works if you're against changing encounters, but based on the fact your solution includes changing encounters; the argument doesn't work.

They're not exclusive. A "gameplay loop" for a healer should look like this:
4 man:
Cure 2 on tank every 2 seconds. Weave 1 DPS in between.

Name a fight where that's required. If DPS can manage to avoid every single AOE, and the boss only attacks the tank, then the DPS never need to be healed.

8 man (2 tank):
Healer A Cure 2 on MT, healer B Cure 2 on OT. Healer A is tasked with keeping the MT at 100%, while Healer B is tasked with party heal every 2 seconds. Healer A weaves Esuna in as needed on the MT, Healer B weaves Esuna on the OT and rest of the party.

8 man (1 tank):
Healer A Cure 2 on MT, healer B Cure 2 on OT. Healer A is tasked with keeping the tank at 100%, while Healer B is tasked with party heal every 2 seconds.

If an encounter is not pushing enough bleeding per second, then the healer is not going to "have anything to do" for some part of the fight, of which they could weave in DPS actions, but you can't design every fight to be nothing but bleeds.

If changing encounters is on the table then a healer rotation is not pointless and is quite the opposite, because there can be an increase in unavoidable damage to force healing and therefor make the possibility of a rotation. There are comparable examples of other games that use a variety of proc's and synergy between spells to force healers into maintaining a rotation so their core heals are effective. I'm not saying this is a solution, I'm just pointing out that the blanket statement you made is subjective, and in my opinion, wrong.

A healer should not have "a DPS rotation" because it takes their eyes off the road. A tank shouldn't have a "DPS rotation" either, but it makes more sense for them to have their tank skills "be a DPS rotation", because none of the tanks do anything but hold enmity of the boss. So all "tanking" should be generating enmity more than the healer and DPS, in theory.

The original encounter design, overhealing would rip enmity away from the tank 100% of the time. Casting Regen outside of a fight would result in all the mobs making a b-line to the healer, even if the tank used shield lob on them, because the original healing design was intended to "top off" the party, and not to just spam every healing option even if unneeded.

The current encounter design instead encourages overhealing, hence a "healing rotation" of doing things that don't need to be done. A lazy healer can play all ARR, HW, and StormBlood content by just pressing Medica 2 every 15 seconds. The rest of the kit, entirely unnecessary due to gear creep. Again, the healer should not be encouraged to DPS because that takes their eyes off the healing task, and the skill levels of a healer in this game are all over the place. When people who have been playing this game for a decade decide to scream at other healers for not DPS'ing it gives them the impression that they are doing something wrong if they aren't spending every possible second DPS'ing. Which is bad game play to start with, because the encounter design does not require the healer to DPS.

Standing around doing nothing feels stupid, but the encounter doesn't require the healer to DPS. It requires them to heal, but giving self-healing actions to tanks and DPS gives them nothing to do if they're good enough at avoiding the AOE's in the first place.

So that leaves us with encounter designs that always cast cleanable debuffs. Debuffs that either slow DPS down, or debuffs that stack bleeds or doom. It's really kind of annoying to try and clean the party of debuffs, which is why so many healers just ignore them if they can be healed through, why waste 18 seconds trying to clean the party when you could just keep casting medica on the party. The fact that Esuna is even an "optional" role skill shows you how little encounter design assumes the healer even has it.

How I would fix that, I explained above. Boss encounters would have phases that require the healer to always be healing something, while the tanks and DPS get slowed or stopped from being able to DPS from debuffs being ignored. If boss casts mini one at a time, the healer can keep up with trying to esuna that, but if they cast it at random, the healer then has to decide who is the best to clean mini from first (logically, the tank)

Solo combat (eg overworld, FATE and solo instances) never require the healer to heal. These are always designed around the player doing DPS only, and that is really why the healer even has DPS buttons to press. They would otherwise be forced to level a DPS job just to advance the MSQ, and then you have to ask why even bother having a tank and healer role in the first place.

The problem is that the gameplay loop, ignores the healer too much. The only content that requires the healer to be present is the party content, when it is new. If the MSQ actually required a healer to heal and a tank to tank perhaps we would see better encounter design overall, but instead if you insist on playing a healer in the solo MSQ content, you basically get to spend 6-20x longer doing it because the DPS isn't scaled up as a healer.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

You know what i would really love to see in encounters? Healing checks.
They never like to keep healers busy anymore, we used to have crazy shit happen to us like Ifrit EX and the Medusa fight I think T7.
Now we just heal. At least make it interesting and have phases where there’s so much damage going out that you have to really just hunker down and heal and if you don’t everyone slowly dies.

[Bibine_Bine]

The healer should have no "DPS" rotation what-so-ever, because that means they won't have their attention on healing. And a "healing rotation" is pretty pointless if the DPS can avoid taking all telegraphed damage, which means that at worst, you only have to press cure-2 once every minute.

So healers shouldn't have a DPS rotation because they won't have their attention on healing, but they don't need to have their attention on healing because they don't have to heal very often?

[OliviaLugria]

Healers used to have a gameplay loop for their DPS, but this resulted in there being a very obvious gap between good to bad healers. The developers commented on this, not wanting their to be such a disparity between the best and worst healers, since bad healers would just gatekeep their entire team from clearing content.

So here we are, where healers gameplay loop is so bare-bones, non-nuanced, devoid of almost any complexity, that any half-awake lobotomy patient could do it almost flawlessly and without friction.

The worst healers in the game aren't pressing dps buttons because they're bad... but because they don't want to... regardless of how simple or how hard a dps kit for healer is there are those who will refuse to press their damage buttons because they're a "healer" I just don't know if the developers understand that...

[SieyaM]

I would be real hesitant to demand any kind of real DPS rotation. I can see it leading to situations where if the party takes damage and the healer has to interrupt their rotation to heal them, then they'll just not be healed. Any kind of DPS rotation given to a healer has to have no penalty for being interrupted to actually heal players.

[Wyti]

That assume we would need to use our GCD for healing. And I'm fine living in a world where we use our healer kit.
If we did ~20% of our GCD on healing our single damage button would not be an issue.

[terrell00]

As Mr. Yoshida once said:

play ultimate.. which is <0.1% of the game in that place you will enjoy

And then they cleared TOP with no healer LMAO

[Bibine_Bine]

I would be real hesitant to demand any kind of real DPS rotation. I can see it leading to situations where if the party takes damage and the healer has to interrupt their rotation to heal them, then they'll just not be healed. Any kind of DPS rotation given to a healer has to have no penalty for being interrupted to actually heal players.

This is a complete non-issue. Anyone who is even remotely competent at playing a healer knows when to heal and when not to heal. If you do not main a healer, please don't presume to speak for us.