FFXIV Healer Strike and the 'How would you fix it?' line

[AnimaAnimus]

Give healers a dps rotation and when they successfully complete it, there is a small aoe heal similar to but not as powerful as assize. We could also give the other healers an ability to mark a party member that would get heals when we do single target rotations. Or if you want to be fancy give us 2 different effects we could throw on a party member, one that gave them a heal when we complete a dps rotation and one that gave them a shield.

Or give us a couple different rotations or a branching rotation one that ends with a shield and one that ends with a heal

Instead of just dumping more and more worthless healing skills on us, give us dps skills that almost act like dots and a couple single and aoe heals for emergencies.

[Zaytex]

Healers are designed to DPS all costs and to complete healing requirements with damage neutral or OGCD heals yet their DPS rotation is just one button with a 30 second DOT.

If tanks are basically melee DPS but with mitigations and a less complex rotation, then make healers into the caster equivalent.

That's it - it's not hard.

[Iedarus]

I am curious what you intend to add for level 100.

[FudoMyoo]

The fix is easy.

All full-time healers unsub.

Waiting time for queue always needs a healer. All the newbs tired of waiting, start playing healers and the cycle continues. lol

[sindriiisgaming]

I wouldn't. Dt is doing a great job of making people press buttons

[ThaCa]

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record at this point, but redesign Healers (and maybe Tanks) to have cyclical self rewarding gameplay.

Casting heals builds dps buttons, casting dps builds heal buttons. It will promote healers to play the way they do at high level content from get-go.

There could even be potential catchup mechanics built in to cover situation where you manage to triage through insane situation and your heals/shields get full-ish non-overheal value by giving you access to powerful party buff or something as reward.

[Doriann]

Healers just wanna have fun.

Spending 70% of our time pressing Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dois is the opposite of fun. We have been asking for engaging gameplay since Shadowbringers, and what we got was a measily single damage button every 2 minutes. This, on top of "Go play ultimates if you want to heal", is beyond insulting to anyone who has healer as their main role

Square enix should just say that they want to make healing as brain dead as possible in order to better program trust's AI so they can have everyone playing the MSQ with the jobs that are actually fun to play - red and blue DPS

[Talianore]

I don't know if it's salvageable since to make healing relevant means they need to implement a lot of balancing changes and nerfs to tank sustainability. I don't think the devs have the desire to kick that hornets nest.

[ForsakenRoe]

We really don't need another healer mega-thread, we get it, you're not happy. No need to spam the entire general discussions with your repeated threads. If someone hasn't read all of your other mega-threads, they're not going to read this one.

This is not a 'healer complaint' megathread, but a 'I made a bunch of fanmade designs, and this is a megathread that contains all 4 in one place'

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record at this point, but redesign Healers (and maybe Tanks) to have cyclical self rewarding gameplay.

Casting heals builds dps buttons, casting dps builds heal buttons. It will promote healers to play the way they do at high level content from get-go.

There could even be potential catchup mechanics built in to cover situation where you manage to triage through insane situation and your heals/shields get full-ish non-overheal value by giving you access to powerful party buff or something as reward.

That's the intention behind the WHM's new gauge, Nature's Vigilance. If you DPS, you get gauge. You spend that gauge on a healing action that is damage neutral. If you need to triage with healing (actual healing spells, not Lily spells) you get gauge MUCH faster. As an example, Glare gives 1 gauge, and Dia a total of 5 over its 12s duration. Medica 2, which you'll probably use as the first thing in response to required AOE healing (after Lilies are spent), gives 15 over its 15s duration. By having much higher generation rates on the 'damage-loss GCD heals', it gets you to the gauge spender heal faster, and gets you back to 'damage-neutral healing' faster.

Coincidentally, this is a system on the 'tutorial healer' WHM, which would teach the new healers who are just starting the role, about trying to keep their damage up, trying to avoid using damage-loss heals, and gently guiding them back towards damage-neutral gameplay via things like the aforementioned gauge build rates

I am curious what you intend to add for level 100.

Me? I didn't bother thinking that far ahead, but all things considered, SE's additions from 91-100 could pretty easily slot into these designs with some small tweaks. I think the only things that would be a bit odd would be 2 specific skills. Seraphism, since part of its effect is to allow for back to back use of Emergency Tactics (which I already did by making ET into a 'stance'). It does allow for instant casts for a while, and a passive regen effect, so those might be enough for it to justify remaining in my version of the job. I think if I had more time I could find a way to make it work better (and be more lorefriendly/thematic). How about (just spitballing):

Tabula Rasa (CD 120s)
Upgrades Adloquium to Manifestation and Concitation to Accession.
Additionally, increases the potency of Biolysis, Miasmalysis and Shadowflare's base casts by 20p.
Duration: 20s

Manifestation (Cost 300MP)
Restores HP to target, and applies a Barrier equal to 75% of the HP restored.
Cure Potency: 900

Accession (Cost 500MP)
Restores HP to self and nearby allies, and applies a Barrier equal to 65% of the HP restored.
Cure Potency: 600

With those potencies and percentages, the GCDs would heal for twice as much as their base version (as if in Strategy: Emergency), while still applying the same potency Barrier effect as their base form (as if in Strategy: Defensive). I think that it'd make sense that, if we have a 'stance dance' gameplay, there'd be a CD that functions as 'you are considered to be in all stances at once', and what better time for an action like that, than Level 100? Also, I think the MP costs in Seraphism are brutal and someone panic-spamming the GCDs might lose track of their MP due to not having a castbar to help their brain register how fast their MP is going down (aka: it happened to me at least once), so halving the MP costs feels fair since it's a level 100 capstone. Although, I did already 'halve' the cost of Adloquium in the base design (by having it match Physick's MP cost) so...

The other action that would be questionable is Philosophia, as it's effectively 'Pankardia, but it can trigger from any spell cast'. I don't know what I'd replace that with in these designs. I've thought about a channelled spell for a while, that pulses damage and healing for its duration, but getting potencies right for that would be tough, and there's the chance of 'losing' it due to the server thinking you're moving when you're not etc. (see Ten Chi Jin). Maybe it could be a relatively simple CD, that feeds into the 'deal damage to heal allies' identity of SGE. How about:

'When you cast Diagnosis, Prognosis, or their Eukrasian versions, your Kardia target explodes in an AOE around them, dealing <Dosis> potency to their target, and 50% less for all secondary targets'

That way, you'd have access to the inverse, of 'heal allies to damage enemies' (on a CD).

Sun Sign, Oracle, Glare 4, Divine Caress, Psyche and Baneful Impaction all would be able to just slot in to these designs, I think. Though Divine Caress' 'niche' is covered by the addition of Barrier Lily spenders somewhat, so I'd maybe replace that with Afflatus Purgation (which has a regen attached in PVP too, conveniently), and it'd be accessed in a way that isn't via Temperance of course. Maybe Misery's keybind swaps to Purgation when under the effect of POM, and upon using Purgation it swaps back (so your burst window would be Purgation, Misery, 3xGlare4, 1xQuake/Flood/Tornado).


Of course, that's all assuming that the current 91-100 actions get to stay. I might have come up with different directions for things (I sure as heck wouldn't have added Seraphism for example), if I had thought about level 100 stuff. But at the time of writing these, I was thinking about the 'now', of level 90 being the max, and what could be added/removed/changed for healers in the 'now' of that day

[ForsakenRoe]

Healers just wanna have fun.

Spending 70% of our time pressing Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dois is the opposite of fun. We have been asking for engaging gameplay since Shadowbringers, and what we got was a measily single damage button every 2 minutes. This, on top of "Go play ultimates if you want to heal", is beyond insulting to anyone who has healer as their main role

This is the crux of the matter. It's indeed beyond insulting to be told to do harder content if I want to have fun with healing, not only because I already DO the harder content, but also because it then puts the burden of 'carrying the engagement factor' on the fight's design, rather than the Job's design. And by the law of averages, not every fight can knock it out of the park. There's going to be the occasional stinker, like P6S or P7S, and when they inevitably appear, the healer job designs can't carry the fight and make it 'enjoyable'. P7S was egregious for this, as it had 6 minutes of effectively nothing (once you had learned what to do), before the fight actually bared its teeth with Inviolate Purgation. On loop, like a broken record player, you'd do those 6 minutes in prog, because the whole 'challenge' of the fight was backloaded into the last half.

Telling someone that 'your role is only meant to be fun if the fight is one of the five hard fights per 8 months, or the players in your party are very bad at the game' is one of the takes of all time. Because sometimes, not all five of those fights even offer the fun that is promised

I don't know if it's salvageable since to make healing relevant means they need to implement a lot of balancing changes and nerfs to tank sustainability. I don't think the devs have the desire to kick that hornets nest.

They might not 'want' to, but they need to at some point, and the longer the wound festers the harder it'll be to treat when it inevitably becomes a necessity. Leaving Bloodwhetting untouched for all of EW has burned into people's minds that 'that's what BW does', if it had been adjusted to function like PLD's spells (heals once on cast, not once per enemy hit), then people would complain at the time yes, but not as much as they would if it were adjusted today, because they've had 2-3 years of feeling like unkillable gods in dungeons, so it's become 'the new normal' for them

I wonder if part of the issue might be that they have an outdated idea of what a 'healer' is, in regards to multiplayer games, and especially in the MMO scene. Have we seen any multiplayer games that use the trinity (Tank, Healer, DPS) since the release of A Realm Reborn, which clearly state (through gameplay, class design or developer interviews) that 'the Healer's responsibility is to heal, and only to heal'? Because the way the FFXIV healer kits are designed now (ie since SHB), you'd think that were true here, with the damage actions being provided 'only to get through the story' (which some players genuinely believe to be the case)