Is there any hope for next expansion?

[Gullis]

nah i've given up. mostly because JP players like current healer gameplay

[Pip_Chick]

Are healers going to be part of the major overhaul to reintroduce job identity? Have the Dev's said that they would like to try anything new with Healers? As far as I know it's been radio silence for any plans concerning change. Dawntrail adding only the most superficial abilities to every class after three expansions of lackluster healer gameplay has not left me very hopeful. I do appreciate getting new healing classes like Warrior and Paladin but they seem to take away more fun from actual healers in exchange.

The only healers that matter are BLU, RDM and WAR. And they seem to be doing fine, weird glitch that they have their icons in different colours though. It's probably just my settings...

But for real now, I don't understand the lack of communication. Healers have been asking for something to change since I think SHB, but it got a big spike in DT due to the media tour fiasco. It was annoying and funny, but it got a lot of eyes on it, even saw people talking about it in game.
But the devs keep being silent on it. This does not make them look good, with the apologies given in the last Live letter you would think they would mobilise to action, like using the news channels to keep us up to date on what they are working and planning.
There should also be soon an announcement for the new Fan fest. But instead of doing what they did with the visual updates in DT fan fests, they should take the time to talk about the gameplay and role changes that they will be making. If they can talk about Falafel chins for 25 minutes, they can talk about the new healer changes in more detail. They could give a 30 or more minutes presentation at all 3 events, Tanks for NA, Healers for EU and DPS for JP.
A lot of the players have very little trust in them at the moment, the content promised did not deliver, was made needlessly complicated and took a long time to arrive. For example if you are not a raider, the time between getting content from 7.1 to 7.25 was about 7 months.
They have to work very hard to win back the good will and respect of the playerbase. Not everyone is happy RPing and AFKing in Limsa and there is just so many ocean fishing trips one can stomach.
7.3 might be interesting due to the deep dungeon, but will it be more like HOH or Orthos? And will it be in 7.3 or 7.35?
They need to get thtir heads back in the game, because as it stands now, it doesn't feel like they are playing their game.

[Sani2341]

I'm not overly optimistic. I stopped healing in Endwalker, because I thought even there healers already hit a brick wall when it comes to design.

The only thing they can do without changing things around is adding even more healing checks and new healing oGCD actions (or charges to old actions) to cover them up. But how boring and spreadsheet-y this is?



More likely... when Fanfests are close to an end. They hardly tell anything really useful in the first one. Maybe the second or third if we're lucky. Most likely post Media tour when it's almost launching.

Just to then take the one change going the right direction away from us inbetween media tour and Release. (Looks at SGE DoTs stacking in the media tour)

[Carighan]

But for real now, I don't understand the lack of communication. Healers have been asking for something to change since I think SHB, but it got a big spike in DT due to the media tour fiasco.

It's probably because they don't know how to avoid a negative fallout from any communication: They hear a lot of very vocal feedback that healers want tougher healer, more involved gameplay and more damage gameplay, yet whenever they simplify something, their stats show queues going down from more people queueing as healers.

As in, the vocal feedback is opposed to the non-vocal one. That's usually a reason you get this, there's no way to announce what you - apparently - must do without pissing the already vocal part of the community off even more. In any case it'd be highly unlikely we get much pre-information even if they're working on a larger role-wide rework because due to the nature of healing (or not-healing) in this game that'd have to also include massive combat-system rebalancing and I can understand a large company not wanting to commit to press on that before absolutely 110% having finalized the first set of changes, so it'd be very close to 8.0 even if something happens (which I don't see, as per the simplification-usually-works issue above).

[Reginald_Cain]

They have plenty job identity, actually. Just nothing to heal, so you never notice their identity, either.

How you make green bar go up shouldn't soley be your job identity. Scholar used to be the dot mage with shields, white mage the elementalist regen healer that had powerful raw heals and astro was the gambling buffer healer that could flex to shield or regen. They had more unique damage kits and healing kits in stormblood and then the devs changed them to appeal to idiots who wanted to only heal in a game where the everybody used to have fun contributing to the raid dps in there own skill expressive ways. The game would not become more fun if we took more damage. It would just be even more repetitive. Instead of broil spam im doing gcd heal spam wow so cool and exciting. No it's not. Bring back distinct damage dealing methods to tanks and healers. They all feel like the same thing with different flavors especially healers.

[Carighan]

How you make green bar go up shouldn't soley be your job identity.

Of course not, but that's also not what I said so I'm unsure why you'd reply that?

Scholar used to be the dot mage with shields

They were not.

white mage the elementalist regen healer that had powerful raw heals and astro was the gambling buffer healer that could flex to shield or regen

Who is defining healers just by their healing now, exactly? .

They had more unique damage kits and healing kits in stormblood and then the devs changed them to appeal to idiots who wanted to only heal in a game where the everybody used to have fun contributing to the raid dps in there own skill expressive ways.

[citation needed]

Instead of broil spam im doing gcd heal spam wow so cool and exciting.

Now imagine, because this seems really really really important to you when it comes to the damage abilities that you had more than a single heal. Wow, crazy I know. Mind blown.

Was that so hard?

[Reginald_Cain]

Of course not, but that's also not what I said so I'm unsure why you'd reply that?



They were not.



Who is defining healers just by their healing now, exactly? .



[citation needed]



Now imagine, because this seems really really really important to you when it comes to the damage abilities that you had more than a single heal. Wow, crazy I know. Mind blown.

Was that so hard?

I will cede that the role could benefit from more opportunities to use its heals and more INTERESTING healing skills added.
That being said I scholar had 3 dots it could use and apply to multiple enemies. So yes it was a dot mage with shields. Was it more simple than dot mage in other games by a huge margin yes but was it infinitely more engaging than it is now? For the ones who played it then yes absolutely. Citation? Multiple players over years of playing. How a healer heals should play a part in their identity but not the only thing. That's how they feel now. The only difference between healers now is mostly the healing kit that's a huge issue to me. We could both get what we want and the game would be better for it but the devs don't understand that.