[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Granyala]

It also makes them incredibly fucking dull when you basically only have to heal with a few oGCD fizzled in. When you're dps'ing more than healing then what's the fucking point?

The point is that the content you visit is undertuned. Simple as that.
If you raid savage, there is enough to heal, esp in chaotic spike phases.

I like the going back and forth between DPS and healing. Except for content like expert, that has you DPSing for 85%+.

[KrayZ33]

The point is that the content you visit is undertuned. Simple as that.
If you raid savage, there is enough to heal, esp in chaotic spike phases.

I like the going back and forth between DPS and healing. Except for content like expert, that has you DPSing for 85%+.

Well, even in Savage content, there are bosses where you just have to time your heals properly and the majority of your GCDs are used for damage spells. It's obviously no where close to the level of a normal dungeon boss but it's not really a full time healing job either (not even close).

Most peeps deal more DPS than HPS with their healing jobs during E5S for example. (10k DPS vs 6k HPS or something)

[Pregnant Orc]

Also do not underestimate Beast Tribe Quests. Especially the Pixies give tons of xp for like 5 minutes of playtime.

Beast Tribes are good EXP especially for the time they take normally but the real bonus comes once you have maxed your reputation with them and the EXP reward doubles; making them a very good tool in the leveling toolbox.
Just wanted to add that for any new players reading the list looking for solo tools.

[Wrecktangle]

The point is that the content you visit is undertuned. Simple as that.
If you raid savage, there is enough to heal, esp in chaotic spike phases.

I like the going back and forth between DPS and healing. Except for content like expert, that has you DPSing for 85%+.

For science - I went in and looked at my statics E6S kill. My 2 healers combined used exactly 13 GCDs for healing. They used 306 GCDs for DPS.

So in Savage for 70th percentile healers they use approximately 96% of their time casting DPS spells.

@KrayZ33 - Strictly IMO - if you're casting that % of DPS spells, I would argue it's a design flaw with the concept of healers. I won't ague that it was/wasn't an intentional decision, but I'll argue it wasn't a good decision.

[lollerlaban]

The point is that the content you visit is undertuned. Simple as that.
If you raid savage, there is enough to heal, esp in chaotic spike phases.

I like the going back and forth between DPS and healing. Except for content like expert, that has you DPSing for 85%+.

TEA and the savages we have gotten so far are a joke in terms of damage, let's be honest here.

[Anastacy]

Heavensward had some of the coolest boss theme music, but I haven't played since early Stormblood.

Anything note-worthy from late SB to now?

[Nasuuna]

The point is that the content you visit is undertuned. Simple as that.
If you raid savage, there is enough to heal, esp in chaotic spike phases.

I like the going back and forth between DPS and healing. Except for content like expert, that has you DPSing for 85%+.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/31BXZ...casts&source=1

so I counted, I had 12 gcds that entire fight that were solely for healing/rez. pretty sure 2 of them were after all the adds were dead before intermission

Rest were damage or lilys

Every other spell there was ogcd. And that was savage shiva


TEA is another story though, lotta hard cast heals in there

[KrayZ33]

Strictly IMO - if you're casting that % of DPS spells, I would argue it's a design flaw with the concept of healers. I won't ague that it was/wasn't an intentional decision, but I'll argue it wasn't a good decision.

I wouldn't even call it a design flaw because the concept of healers isn't set in stone.
Just because you play the healer type character, doesn't mean you will only(mostly) heal instead of dealing damage. I see it more of a perk. Just like a tank should be able to deal a decent amount of damage, yet their perk is that they can control the boss/fight. But well, that's just my ideal situation

You could argue that you did expect to heal more, or that you'd expect to do it the other way around (mostly oGCDs for damage, hardcast for heals) but someone who looks at FFXIV "healers" as a support class might view the whole thing differently. If you take a look at FFXIV encounter design since ARR, you can actually see that it isn't about healing a constant stream of damage, it's more about upping the group whenever a raid wide damage happened. Or "counter healing" a short burst phase etc.

To me, FFXIV healers are basically DPS with healing abilities. Closer to Guildwars than WoW, if you know what I mean.
After all, healer DPS is pretty high, in certain situations (AoE) very high.

I will however agree that this point of view doesn't find much support anymore due to what they did to our/their DPS abilities. It's a joke to be honest, I've always been against it (except for the removal of the stance). They said they wanted to add to and change encounters to require more healing but I was doubtful from the very first second (yet still believed in them).
In the end however, I was always thinking "okay, but what about the old content you will eventually run so often, won't that just feel awful for healers then?"
You can imagine that I was just as disappointed as anyone else when it turned out that encounter design didn't change at all.
And the tickrate etc. is not to blame. It's their design phisolophy. You can easily add more ST and Dot damage to a fight to make it interesting, even in FFXIV. You can force DPS to soak orbs constantly, to gather up pools, to stay inside damage-pools that will tick away your health, but if you move outside, you'll cause a wipe. etc. etc.

That stuff hardly exist, if it even exists at all. And that's the stuff healers need to counter if you really want to play with full time healers.

[Granyala]

Well, even in Savage content, there are bosses where you just have to time your heals properly and the majority of your GCDs are used for damage spells. It's obviously no where close to the level of a normal dungeon boss but it's not really a full time healing job either (not even close).

Most peeps deal more DPS than HPS with their healing jobs during E5S for example. (10k DPS vs 6k HPS or something)

If the group plays well, yes. I never managed to out DPS my HPS, simply because my group did not play well and needed more healing.
Bosses still died though.

Personally, I cannot fathom how healers manage to keep raids alive using mostly oGCDs. Esp as a WHM I do not have that many, certainly not enough to pull people through bosses like E2S.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/31BXZ...casts&source=1

so I counted, I had 12 gcds that entire fight that were solely for healing/rez. pretty sure 2 of them were after all the adds were dead before intermission
Rest were damage or lilys

Every other spell there was ogcd. And that was savage shiva

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/31BXZ...aling&source=1

I see:
17 Medica II casts
4 Medica casts
1 Cure II
4 Cure II
1 Cure
13 Solace casts
14 Rapture casts

That's 54 GCD's spent on healing.

I see
17 Assize
7 Asylum
3 Benediction
6 Grammaton
8 Benison

That's 41 oGCD actions, if I count assize as a heal spell.

VS

164 Glare
9 Misery
30 Dia

203 GCDs spent on damage.
So the split is rougly 1:4 or 21% Healing 79% DPS.

Yeah, to say you keep the raid alive with mainly oGCDs is simply not true.

Oh btw: you had 8K DPS vs 11K HPS. So you didn't manage to out dps your HPS either.
Wee I don't feel quite as incompetent anymore.

For fairness sake: I managed to dig up an old log of my cat.
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/KRyvM...pe=damage-done
75 casts on healing, 22 oGCD's
93 casts on damage
A 45% Healing vs 55% damage split. Obviously a different encounter though, keep that in mind.
13k HPS vs 4.5K DPS *whistles* I know, my DPS was always crap.

[Nasuuna]

If the group plays well, yes. I never managed to out DPS my HPS, simply because my group did not play well and needed more healing.
Bosses still died though.

Personally, I cannot fathom how healers manage to keep raids alive using mostly oGCDs. Esp as a WHM I do not have that many, certainly not enough to pull people through bosses like E2S.

- - - Updated - - -


https://www.fflogs.com/reports/31BXZ...aling&source=1

I see:
17 Medica II casts
4 Medica casts
1 Cure II
4 Cure II
1 Cure
14 Regen casts
13 Solace casts
14 Rapture casts

That's 68 GCD's spent on healing.

I see
17 Assize
7 Asylum
3 Benediction
6 Grammaton
8 Benison

That's 41 oGCD actions, if I count assize as a heal spell.

VS

164 Glare
9 Misery
30 Dia

203 GCDs spent on damage.
So the split is rougly 1:3 or 25% Healing 75% DPS.

Yeah, to say you keep the raid alive with mainly oGCDs is simply not true.

Oh btw: you had 8K DPS vs 11K HPS. So you didn't manage to out dps your HPS either.
Wee I don't feel quite as incompetent anymore.

For fairness sake: I managed to dig up an old log of my cat.
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/KRyvM...pe=damage-done

Eh, there were a few deaths, kinda what happens, again, several of these casts were literally when you cant attack, before and after add phase is easily 5-7 casts, lookaway is another 3

[Granyala]

I will however agree that this point of view doesn't find much support anymore due to what they did to our/their DPS abilities. It's a joke to be honest, I've always been against it (except for the removal of the stance)

Preach it, brother.
Even if a "bad healer" like me with a "mediocre group" that can't clear savage spends 50% of his time DPSing, it's pretty lame to do so with only 2 buttons.

- - - Updated - - -

Eh, there were a few deaths, kinda what happens, again, several of these casts were literally when you cant attack, before and after add phase is easily 5-7 casts, lookaway is another 3

That would explain the 40% overheal

[Nasuuna]

Preach it, brother.
Even if a "bad healer" like me with a "mediocre group" that can't clear savage spends 50% of his time DPSing, it's pretty lame to do so with only 2 buttons.

- - - Updated - - -



That would explain the 40% overheal

Lel, pug life and blowing lilys to not overcap

I also still have to adjust cause I had to basically solo heal the entire first tier that i played

[Granyala]

Lel, pug life and blowing lilys to not overcap

Aye, looks more like difficult to control Medica II / Asylum and using Azzize as a DPS spell.
Can't really be helped if the other healer isn't cooperating.

Solo healing is so much more fun than DPS derping, if you ask me. In my static I always played the "main healer" trying to solo heal as much as I could before my co-healer chipped in.

I really like the healing system in FF-XIV and how powerful heals feel as opposed to WoWs "spamcast a weak as crap heal to get your big button off CD" approach.
Too bad we get to do so little of it under normal circumstances.

[Nasuuna]

Aye, looks more like difficult to control Medica II / Asylum and using Azzize as a DPS spell.
Can't really be helped if the other healer isn't cooperating.

Solo healing is so much more fun than DPS derping, if you ask me. In my static I always played the "main healer" trying to solo heal as much as I could before my co-healer chipped in.

I really like the healing system in FF-XIV and how powerful heals feel as opposed to WoWs "spamcast a weak as crap heal to get your big button off CD" approach.
Too bad we get to do so little of it under normal circumstances.

I resubbed briefly cause i wanted to do some mythic plus

I'd have to blow half my mana bar as an hpal to cap a tank outside of wings, it was stupid.

[Granyala]

I resubbed briefly cause i wanted to do some mythic plus
I'd have to blow half my mana bar as an hpal to cap a tank outside of wings, it was stupid.

Yeah I had a pretty bad time healing as a holy priest as well. You fight like a madman, just to stem the tide as best you can until the "now I can finally move the HP bar to the right" skill is ready. If people start to gimp you can just stand there and look helpless unless you are lucky and CDs are ready.

I never felt so powerless in my life (online life that is) and it was simply frustrating and not fun at all. I loved healing back in TBC-MoP, even though Cata started with the "cast the tiny heal as much as possible to conserve mana".

[Hyral]

When you don't have to hard cast any heals because everything is covered by oGCD then it's just a dps spec for people who can't grasp actual dps specs

Hear hear. I don't know why they decided to design healers like that this expac but it's ridiculous the state things are in. I spend almost all of my time spamming Malefic/Gravity instead of doing something fun. It's why I'm switching to SCH because at least Energy Drain and Ruin II give me something else to do than press one button, specially during movement.

I disagree there's anything wrong with letting healers do things through oGCDs or that healers should be healing 100% of the time though. I rather them build some complexity to our dps options so we aren't forced to shut down our brains during periods of no/low damage than just have us constantly spam heals instead, that would be just as mindless. Like WoW healing.

[StrawberryZebra]

Welcome to Japanese culture, aspects of which have spread to the western audience as well.

Perhaps, I have no idea why though. I didn't enjoy the time I worked in Japan in the slightest, but I think the Japanese colleagues I had found it worse than I did. I've always been in a workplace culture where, when we're having issues with something or someone, we would look at how best to resolve it and move forwards. Occasionally that ment telling someone that the work they had done wasn't up to standard and either needed to be scrapped completely, or needed some work put in to improving it. That wasn't done as a direct attack against that person, but delivered as a learning experience. It let people know that they could make mistakes and would get feedback to correct any problems.

That same culture has always encouraged people to put forward their thoughts and ideas for a project. Sometimes they don't work out and need to be rethought entirely, others were run away success stories.

That kind of environment seemed to be completely alien to the Japanese. Their work place culture was almost the opposite. They focused on not making mistakes at all, to the point where no one would want to put an idea forward for fear it would be seen as "wrong". As a result, the idea of constructive feedback never seemed to sit well with them.

As an aside to this, their work habits were shocking. They were constantly showing up after having little sleep, no food and spent the whole day trying to work with no breaks. They were basically on permenant crunch, and as a consequence sill mistakes were constantly being made. The amount of productive work was overall quite low, despite the number of hours put in. The amount of dirty looks I got for sending people home for the evenings and weekends was unreal.

Which is going to be a problem for someone like myself. If I have an issue, I'll let you know to your face and we're going to have that discussion like adults. If you're keeping that bottled up and avoiding that very situation, there's going to be a lot of friction in that relationship.

Indeed.

Just look at how often we went through the cycle of overly defensive people on this very forum replying with, "IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT JUST LEAVE" at any hint of constructive criticism of the game.

Absolutely true. I've been involved in more than my fair share of those discussions over the years. I'll probably be involved in a lot more in the future. It's always come from a desire to see FF14 be the best version of itself it can be.

Though I must admit, I've never seen the reasoning behind the "Just leave!" arguments. People just might, you know.

The rest is small fry.

Which is really the issue - You've got some great sources of XP every day, but if you want to power level a certain Job you're going to run out of those pretty quick. Sure, you can queue for the highest level dungeon available, but the queues there can be quite lengthy.

There isn't really a way to keep XP trickling in at a constant rate. You get the big lump sums every day, but after that you're short on options. FATE's were, I think, the intended solution, but when there none up, you're pretty much out of luck.

Especially due to stance-dance. I'm glad that the stance-dancing is gone, but I'd love to have my abilities back.

I miss Cleric Stance. The Scholar hasn't been the same without it.

To me, FFXIV healers are basically DPS with healing abilities. Closer to Guildwars than WoW, if you know what I mean.
After all, healer DPS is pretty high, in certain situations (AoE) very high.

Guild Wars 2 is, I suppose, an apt comparison. There's a limited number of healing tools available to heal other players with, and you've got to make the best of them as well as you can.

The issue, as I see it, is that Squenix have no clear design for healers anymore. As a Scholar, I have an AoE heal that costs MP, an AoE heal that costs Aetherflow, and an AoE heal that costs Fairy Gauge. The cost for 2 of those is neligible, since the resource refills quickly. 2 of them are also resource positive when used on cooldown.

Which one should you use? It doesn't matter, pick any. As long as you pick one, it'll be the right choice.

The Fairy Gauge itself feels very arbitry, has little to no synergy with the rest of the jobs kit, and seems like it only exists to give an excuse to have a Gauge to begin with.

Then they're limited by the game engine. WoW can have massively varied abilities like Lightwell, Prayer of Mending, Soothing Mist. They've got Smart Heals, AoE zone heals, channeled heals. Healing consumables players can make. Healing over time, trickle heals, AoE burst heals.

In terms of Damage, WoW not only incentivises players for DPSing, but in many cases actively rewards it. Monks can use melee attacks to recover mana, Paladins can quickly cycle their cooldowns, Priests can heal a portion of the damage they deal.

FF14 doesn't really reward damage other than simply contributing to your groups damage. Heals come in 4 different types. HoTs, Shields, Single target and AoE. That's it. That doesn't leave much room for adding in new and interesting abilities. Shadowbringers just felt like a case of more of the same for Scholar, and the White Mage got stuff taken away from it to give back as "new" abilities at level 80. Astrologian just got straight up gutted. It clearly indicates, to me, that they're struggling to come up with a clear vision for what they want healers to be overall, and each Jobs niche within that overall structure.

[Kyriani]

I know I'm a bit late on the topic of solo leveling options but I thought it couldn't hurt to share what I've done.

Hunting/Challenge Log for anything that isn't lvl 20 or higher to get them to 20.
Challenge Log, squadron dungeons, daily beast tribe quests and roulettes (when I felt comfy with the job) to 60.
Challenge Log, daily beast tribe quests and roulettes (when I felt comfy with the job) to 71.
Challenge Log, trust dungeons, daily beast tribe quests and roulettes (when I felt comfy with the job) to 80.

60 to 70 is the rough spot since you can't do squadron dungeons for worthwhile xp and don't access trusts till 71.

Now for the caveat... squadrons and trusts aren't particularly fast... but if you're leveling a DPS job... you can basically tab out through the bulk of it and watch netflix or whatever, with only periodically tabbing back in to move on to the next trash pack or to kill a boss. You don't even have to contribute to the boss killing... just dodge and not die. I know for some people the speed is what matters so this won't be acceptable, but if you want a "low-effort" way to level, this works quite well, and you can engage in other entertainment while you do it. It's also not a bad way to lvl jobs you don't like and aren't particular good at but want to level them just to have everything maxed.

Tank and Healer jobs can work with this method as well but you actually have to play and can't just tab out. They also aren't very good choices in the trust dungeon levels since the trust npcs do no aoe at all (unlike the squadron dps npcs) so you're better off running with real players. But there are a lot more DPS jobs than tank and healer jobs, and not everyone is particularly good at or particularly likes playing certain jobs. This method worked for me to get those jobs maxed without subjecting groups to my awful game play and low dps (trust me when I say I did everyone a favor lvling BLM this way).

[Granyala]

Sure, you can queue for the highest level dungeon available, but the queues there can be quite lengthy.
FATE's were, I think, the intended solution, but when there none up, you're pretty much out of luck.

1) Well queues are part of every MMO. So umm... deal with it?
2) Seriously? It typically takes less than 5 minutes for a new one to appear in the zone. Granted, with split zones (in regards to level like some of the stormblood zones) FATE leveling can be annoying.

In Shadowbringers, Trust is your ultimate in solo leveling. Dungeon xp w/o any queues.

[Delever]

Thing with healing in this game is that even in savage an ultimate MOST (not all) mechanics are so incredibly scripted that once you have the entire fight boiled down, if no one in your team fucks up a mechanic and proper mitigation is used for everything, the spells that you will be using for healing will be the exact same in every situation therefore leaving you with a ton of space to dps. Boss aoes always hit the same, happen at exactly the same time etc. Therefore its really easy to plan your heals ahead, most of which are ogcds. I d even go as far as to say that you almost have a healing rotation for a fight in your head (once you know the entire fight) and as long as no one fucks up their dance steps its dps all night long time baby.
Therefore:
Not wanting to dps as a healer is a valid concern. Sadly not in this game though. There are many many mmos where healers are required to heal almost full time. This is not one of them.
Which has led me to believe that whatever Yoshida is saying during the live letters about healers not required to dps is entirely damage control and shoving problems aside. The inherent design of the fights and the healing classes proves otherwise. Supposedly they gutted the healers dps toolkit and increased the variety of healing spells in ShB because they would up the healing requirements. Which spoiler alert was not the case at all.