After all these years....

[Carighan]

I think the only hope we'd have of getting something to change would be if people could somehow convince the devs to actually play Healer.

It's not that. If that were the root cause, we'd have to assume the devs don't play any job, as none of them are particularly well designed, and discussing which is 0/10 and which is 1/10 is really not productive if we're honest.

The issue in the fight design superceding all class design. The fight designers want maximum mechanical freedom. This means they thrive from being 100% able to plan how players will and will want to behave. Hence the large-scale trivialization of healing into sparse oGCDs, the near-immunity of melee DPS to specific abilities hitting them but not the ranged like 360° cleaves on autoattacks like other games, the relaxed ease of staying in melee range, but also the near-absence of casted spells. After all, our least-mobile mage would easily be the most-mobile mage of any other game.

So what we really need is the devs to not play any post-normal PvE content, if we want to express things that way. That'd deprioritize encounter design, and through that soften or even eliminate the need for homogenization and mechanical triviality in design.

And that would then, in turn, open the door to reworks that make jobs less just-button-bloat and more actual gameplay depth. Including making healers actually, well, heal. Primarily.

[Valence]

Healing is still in the current game the only remaining old school trinity based mechanic that hasn't been completely trivialized (like tanking, etc). Especially in challenging content, the functionality of the party is tied to two core factors: 1) people doing their body check mechanics properly and 2) the healer actually healing when required, even if just after unavoidable damage.

If the healer doesn't heal properly, then this introduce another layer of failure on top of mechanics, which is an additional burden directly baked on the role. The idea since ShB has been to dramatically reduce healer brain load so that they cannot really fail at healing since the only thing they have to do on the side is spamm 1. Even healing moves those days all do the same, doesn't matter much which button you press ultimately. In dungeons for casual content, it goes for the exacts same principle: if the healer dies, then the party wipes, or used to at least, which isnt necessarily the case with the other roles (especially dps). Guess why they made tanks unkillable now?

It is SE's way to ensure that no party member actually proves to be a weak link that completely blocks the party from progressing. Everything must be smooth sailing. Everything should not require socialization and discussing with strangers. People should just be able to connect to the game after a long day of hard work, find a party instantly, press a few buttons according to the script, no deviation, and guardrails if somehow something still goes wrong.

This is by design, and completely tied to the macdonaldization of the game.

[Carighan]

I mean if that counts as "not completely trivialized" to you, then so would be tanks pressing their CDs against tankbusters and damage dealers actually dealing enough damage to not wipe to a hard-enrage. If your bar is that low, all roles are trivialized to the same effective degree (which was my point).

[Valence]

I you don't heal a dungeon, your party is going to die (except the tank, which is the whole point I was making). If you don't mitigate as a tank, good grief, nobody cares. Healing has been trivialized and dumbed down but it's still one of the two main metrics around which the game functions, which is damage and healing. This is why as I explained above I do think that it explains perfectly well why the devs don't want healers to be so slightly more complex.

They do not want friction in the game, and as long as they will keep to that mentality, then no, you won't see healers change in the slightest.

[miraidensetsu]

FRU being cleared without tanks gives me more hope than that.

At least, last time content was cleared on patch without tank, devs moved swiftly to fix whatever made that possible.

[Rithy255]

FRU being cleared without tanks gives me more hope than that.

At least, last time content was cleared on patch without tank, devs moved swiftly to fix whatever made that possible.

I really don't know how this gives you hope on fixing healers if it's done because it was cleared without tanks, if anything that line of reasoning is more likely to lead to random buffs for tanks that aren't needed.

I personally don't think they give tanks or healers much thought anymore in terms of design and purpose in fights, I doubt that will change anytime soon.

[Carighan]

I always struggle understanding the logic of the devs here because it's not like at least improving things would be difficult:

* Add that Valigarmanda DoT to ~all current fights. Constant low-level healing needed.
* Reduce the effect of tank-stance, making holding aggro tougher.

Hey, it's not a big thing, but at least healers and tanks have to do *some* healing and tanking again!

[Valence]

You don't need a room wide dot to every fight (which would be quite boring), you can just go back to ARR fight design where enemies actually hurt, can crit (this is especially big because it adds some randomness), can cleave (and not just in cones in front of them), where mechanics often add damage stacks to adds or the boss under specific circumstances, and where healers aren't armed to the brim with free oGCD heals and mitigation tools that cost them literally nothing to use. You'd also need to revert all the toxic MP simplifications brought over by ShB.

One of the big shift in battle design paradigm that has occurred since then is that fights used to be scarcity based, where resources required to be managed and carefully used, where triaging had to happen, and where wipes didn't always happen because somebody just stood in the bad, but because the party just collapsed out of exhaustion of its own limited resources, or that the enemy resources or stacks would go out of hand and overwhelm everyone.

[NobleWinter]

Remember when Titan Extreme in A Realm Reborn had permanent death once you fell off the platform. Your party members were the limited resource you had to maintain throughout the fight lmao. We didn't even have rescue back then as healers. I would love to see a fight put that kind of pressure on a healer again. WHM with no Thin Air, Lillies, or Assize forced to actually consider MP the entire fight. What a time to be alive. All this while having more dps buttons to press and Cleric Stance to toggle. If I think about it too long I'm just gonna spiral into hating this game more. That was one of my favorite memories as a Scholar/White Mage.

[Teno]

I think the only hope we'd have of getting something to change would be if people could somehow convince the devs to actually play Healer.

See if they think healers really are in an acceptable state when they're playing and spamming one spell through the MSQ, dungeons and trials. And doing DPS probably on the level of a Trust NPC with that spam.

It's not that unfortunately. We've been posting on the japanese forums after discovering a while back that they loved their 11111 spam for some reason, and unless they change their stance on it, we won't be getting much. It also showed that they only really listen to jp feedback.

TLDR: Yoship is only listening to japanese feedback and they like 1111 so we're doomed.