Creative Studio III: Please Reconsider Healer Design Before Evercold

[Carighan]

For me, the issues with healers isn't in the healing jobs, it's in the content that doesn't need them.

This is regardless of the evercold rework though, isn't it? Both now and then healers would feel insanely much better to play if it wasn't 90% GCDs spent on casting damage, but instead more like a 50/50 split and if anything, healing would win out (otherwise there's a role for that already, it's called: damage, you just swap to it if you want to be spending ~100% of your time doing damage).

I fully agree btw. The healer problem cannot be solved with class reworks. It just cannot. The best a class rework could do is one of:

* Turn each healer into a bad DPS by trying to add more damage tools like so many players here seem to want to.
* Remove the green role entirely like GW2 did it, and evenly spread healing tools (both self and group) over all classes, making what little active healing we need everyone's problem, or more specifically like in GW2, making every raidmember's re-healing that raid member's problem.

To actually solve the issue with healers in FFXIV, the fight design has to change. That being said, the WHM rework already shows something good: It cuts a lot of healing tools. Not nearly as many as I had hoped, but a lot. One core issue with the current design is that there is no reason to ever actively heal as over the years with expansion after expansion every healer now has 2x++ as many oGCD options as they'd ever need for any fight. Removing just those already massively changes how the classes feel to play as you'd then spend a good 30%+ of the fight casting actual heals. Like, with GCDs!
That's of course not nearly enough. The fights themselves have to change. The constant near-uninterrupted barrage of binary do-or-die mechanics needs to be made more sparse, replaces with a constant, neverending, neverceasing barrage of slow attrition damage. As there are four principal types of this (steady DoT, random single hits, 360° cleaves, untelegraphed AoEs) the mix can be variable both between fights and even within the same fight, plus this would mean there's a lot more time of the fight where the boss actually gets to autoattack the tanks and make them require healing, too.

Shift a good 25%+ of the current fight design from "walk around this mech or it's a wipe" to "Survive this, in whatever way!" and we'd be facing a very different healer feel.

[Alice_Rivers]

I'm honestly not convinced they're going to change fight design at this point, we were told Dawntrail was going to give us new fight design and I don't see it. Looking at what they've shown us of evolved mode, I'm probably going to let my sub run out after the 8.0 MSQ, WHM already does most of it's healing on the GCD that's part of why I play it and I (maybe alone, I don't know) like having the option to handle a mechanic four different ways - the party is going to lose half their HP? Do I Plenary and Rapture? Do I use my bubble? Do I use temperance for lols? Or do I cast medica for the first time this week? Decisions, decisions.

I am resistant to having that choice taken away from me

[Carighan]

I'm honestly not convinced they're going to change fight design at this point, we were told Dawntrail was going to give us new fight design and I don't see it.

DT's fight design is iterative not reinventive, but it is quite different in net result. There's a reason everyone commends it so much. And this extends beyond savage fights (which are the standout piece though with superb fight mechanics even ignoring the amazing soundtracks each and every one has), even normal dungeon bosses have interesting mechanics here or there like the everyone-for-themselves gauler fight or so.

[Valence]

DT fight design is great that it solved all issues with healing for sure.

[ty_taurus]

Do you know what specifically you'd like to see change? I can understand that there are parts of the job you feel aren't engaging enough, but do you have any specific ideas on what should be changed in particular?

I'm no stranger to sharing examples of ideas I'd create or solutions I've asked for. I can give a sparknotes on the example of a fixed evolved White Mage on my thread on the healer page:

Glare and Dia are essentially the same except Glare has a cast time while Dia is instant cast but has a 20 second cooldown with charges. Both combo into High Glare/High Dia which are AOE. So Dia is used flexibly when needed. Holy III changes to a 20 second cooldown that grants Sanctity. Use Thin Air to consume Sanctity to change Glare and Dia into Afflatus Purgation and Afflatus Sanctuary respectively for sightly different benefits. You choose one, and consume Sanctity blooms a lily, you can also cast Holy III off cooldown at double the MP cost to generate a lily if you need more. Lilies apply to Cure and Medica as well as Aquaveil which is GCD in this concept, and Afflatus Misery is restored as the DPS refund for spending lilies. Lastly, Assize replaces Plenary Indulgence as an OGCD damage button that also adds a regen to your Cure and Medica by changing them into Solace and Rapture, as well as makes Esuna upgrade into the AOE Esuna III (which can spend lilies).

In other words, your damage buttons are Glare III, Dia, Holy III, Afflatus Misery, and Assize, which is technically less than we have now, but you interact with different parts of the DPS tools more frequently and more dynamically, and you have agency over greeding more resources for healing through your DPS

[RaionKansen]

I'd really just wait for the other 2 fanfests before getting all worked up.

Let them cook. The alternative is literally nothing changes at all and more people continue to leave the game.

I'm pretty much chilling until we get the first tier of Savage. Nothing really matters until then anyways. We most likely won't be taking enough damage in the MSQ and the Extreme to know much of how anything feels for healers and tanks even once the expansion is in our hands until there's content that actually lets them fulfill their role.

[ty_taurus]

I'd really just wait for the other 2 fanfests before getting all worked up.

Let them cook. The alternative is literally nothing changes at all and more people continue to leave the game.

I'm pretty much chilling until we get the first tier of Savage. Nothing really matters until then anyways. We most likely won't be taking enough damage in the MSQ and the Extreme to know much of how anything feels for healers and tanks even once the expansion is in our hands until there's content that actually lets them fulfill their role.

Like we let them cook for Shadowbringers? Or Endwalker? Or Dawntrail? How many times do we need to let them cook before they actually make something edible for once? The other alternative is they do a good job designing healers for once, actually.

The reason why it's important to say things now is because there's time for them to make adjustments. Will they? Probably not, but I don't really like the idea of laying down and taking it.

[Azurarok]

No one is saying the status quo is good, and the status quo has been the continuous dumbing down of healers, which happens to be what we were shown with WHM. Let people voice their concerns

[RaionKansen]

Like we let them cook for Shadowbringers? Or Endwalker? Or Dawntrail? How many times do we need to let them cook before they actually make something edible for once? The other alternative is they do a good job designing healers for once, actually.

The reason why it's important to say things now is because there's time for them to make adjustments. Will they? Probably not, but I don't really like the idea of laying down and taking it.

Every time we've still had to wait till the content is out. You saying anything isn't going to matter because you lack information. Most of your concerns could already be addressed by Mr. Prime and you have no real way of knowing. We were given a rough draft.

Also there's genuine big changes coming.

[ty_taurus]

Every time we've still had to wait till the content is out. You saying anything isn't going to matter because you lack information. Most of your concerns could already be addressed by Mr. Prime and you have no real way of knowing. We were given a rough draft.

Also there's genuine big changes coming.

And every time, our concerns about healer design were validated when said content came out. I would love to be proven wrong this time, but our track record proves otherwise. Every time, it's always "wait and see! The content will make it worth it!" And every time it wasn't. Nothing will make boring Glareficoilosis spam fun across all layers of XIV's content be it old, new, casual, hardcore, or anything in between. It is unacceptable design and you will never stop me from continuing to call it out for what it is until either they finally make healing fun at all levels of content regardless of how much healing is or isn't needed, or I fully give up on the game and move on.