Why Refunding Damage for Healing is Bad.

[Supersnow845]

Say it with me kids

A job should be fun in all content and exclusively balancing for savage is why the jobs are as bad as they are now

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The "you don't even do extreme/savage" excuse is really funny if we think about it. Good amount of people here had done more than the entirety of EW/DT (or maybe include ShB too) high-ends. These folks can also refute with "Oh right you're never here before modern savage yes?" - Listen how stupid that sounds? Because we're also hearing the same idiocy from the former.

[Valence]

Bringing back MP could be another alternative. There is many levers that can be used to generate weight behind healing/damaging choices on healers.

Lilies on current WHM could very well have been a system with MP costs behind Afflatus spells that would still prove superior to base heals for obvious reasons. Every healing OGCD could also have cost attached to it, which would also remain superior as they wouldn't occupy a GCD (that can be used for damage).

If there is a cost behind it, then whatever form healing abilities take, they can't suddenly be just spammed mindlessly, and they have to find a balance with damage spells as a result.

[RaionKansen]

The "you don't even do extreme/savage" excuse is really funny if we think about it. Good amount of people here had done more than the entirety of EW/DT (or maybe include ShB too) high-ends. These folks can also refute with "Oh right you're never here before modern savage yes?" - Listen how stupid that sounds? Because we're also hearing the same idiocy from the former.

It's not stupid at all. You're just mad because you chose to quit the game and some people aren't willing to validate your ignorant/outdated takes because of it. I can't fix that problem for you.

Did you just do one tier and then peace out?

Refunding Damage for healing solves an issue that has existed forever.
Making healing "damage neutral" mitigates braindead greedy healers from griefing the party just to try and do more dps.

You should know that, right?

[Azurarok]

maybe all dps jobs should be phys ranged and 1 button then, since greeding melees/casters wiping a party feels just as bad

change all the jobs to accommodate the worst players

[Alice_Rivers]

Refunding Damage for healing solves an issue that has existed forever.
Making healing "damage neutral" mitigates braindead greedy healers from griefing the party just to try and do more dps.

This is a direct cause and effect issue with some inertia though. It is natural for any player in a dps-centric game to maximise their dps, for healers that means minimising healing casts, now that's not a problem in games that teach healers to heal but FF14 is not one of those games - in fact FF14 requires so little healing, especially in the 'tutorial' content (normal), it actually teaches healers to not heal. Worse than that, the game has put so much healing in the hands of tanks that tank deaths in normal content have become a tank skill issue, not a healer skill issue and that is a fundamental failure of game design.

[Uzephi]

It's not stupid at all.

Hot take: EX, Savage, 20% cleared doomtrain. Less than 15% cleared cruiserweight as of today. Last tier. You're the minority. Let the game cater to you and shun 75-85% of the players? I hope you like a dead game, cause that's what it will be.

[RaionKansen]

This is a direct cause and effect issue with some inertia though. It is natural for any player in a dps-centric game to maximise their dps, for healers that means minimising healing casts, now that's not a problem in games that teach healers to heal but FF14 is not one of those games - in fact FF14 requires so little healing, especially in the 'tutorial' content (normal), it actually teaches healers to not heal. Worse than that, the game has put so much healing in the hands of tanks that tank deaths in normal content have become a tank skill issue, not a healer skill issue and that is a fundamental failure of game design.

What games are teaching healers to heal? Classic WoW servers? You can't make healers heal a lot in casual content because then it stops becoming casual.

I'm all for this being changed, but every MMORPG struggles with healers being extremely boring to play in casual content because there isnt enough damage for you to fulfill your role.

Its kind of true for Tanks as well though. If I was on a healer and had 3 other dps instead of a tank I would just be able to heal them. We wouldn't need a tank for anything. DPS makes the encounters faster so its the only role that actually gets to do their job in roulette content. I've healed myself on SGE quite a few times while pulling the mobs and clearing them because the Tank is either AFK/DC'd or the party is waiting to refill

[Alice_Rivers]

What games are teaching healers to heal? Classic WoW servers? You can't make healers heal a lot in casual content because then it stops becoming casual.

I'm all for this being changed, but every MMORPG struggles with healers being extremely boring to play in casual content because there isnt enough damage for you to fulfill your role.

Personally I don't define "your role isn't needed beyond completing the party composition" as casual content, I define that as a failure of design, doesn't matter if it's healer or tank. I feel like I've said a hundred times now "they shouldn't balance jobs around dungeons, they should balance dungeons around jobs" and they should design these things around players actually playing their role even pressing their buttons. Having maybe as many as four to six in ten GCDs (rather than seven in eighty five GCDs solo-healing a raid) be a heal is perfectly casual but is also a healer forced to do their job.

Is it fun to carry a minimum ilvl tank who pulls W2W and doesn't press a single heal or mitigation? Sometimes, yes. Can that reasonably be described as "casual"? Probably not. Similarly a healer who tanks W2W pulls is probably not casual either. The bar for casual is of course low, but SE's apparent bar (if it exists) is buried underground.

In terms of content design, I struggle to think of ways to manage four to six healing GCDs in every ten with the current fight design paradigm, I'm analytical not creative. But that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done. If the game actually encouraged people to heal by actually needing people to heal then you'd see a lot of the players who play healers because of queue times stop and more people who play healers because they like healing return to the role and it wouldn't matter to most of those people if healing generated dps resources or not because they're having fun pressing their healing buttons.

EDIT: Per my response to ForsakenRoe, the "four or six to ten" number was spitballed without much thought.

[ForsakenRoe]

In terms of content design, I struggle to think of ways to manage four to six healing GCDs in every ten with the current fight design paradigm, I'm analytical not creative.

We probably ought to start with getting even one Healing GCD required per 10 GCDs in casual content (IE EX Roulette Dungeons). Bearing in mind that 10 GCDs at base Spellspeed levels, is 25 seconds, having to press 'four to six' Healing GCDs means an average of around 6s between uses, which is of course completely unsustainable with the current MP costs, and very likely to result in being heavily punishing if you fall behind on HPS output

There's ways to get us to press Healing GCDs more often, that aren't necessarily super 'punishing' to a more casual player, for example via 'Heal Absorb' effects, that work like an anti-shield that blocks your healing from working until you heal through it, or 'actually making use of Esuna more frequently', etc. But four to six out of every ten... that's a little too far in the other direction IMO. An average of one to two Healing GCDs per 25s is probably closer to the right balance. However, there can be 'pressure moments' where the average is skewed towards 'use more Healing GCDs here', for example, in a situation where everyone in the dungeon party gets a Doom and you have to Esuna them all, that's four GCDs in quick succession, which raises the 'average'