k97-bb: Not watched the video yet but the other day on /r/ffxiv_discussion there was a post along the lines of "healing only being fun when things go wrong" is bad design which reallly sums up the issue imo

Sol-ct9oe: Me rescuing my friend into the 200th aoe: Yeah I do enjoy healing a bit

Mthwprk: It seems to me that in my experience the amount of unavoidable damage that people take is so low that they can be cured by one oGCD, while any significant damage that comes from misreading a mechanic, will instantly kill you. There is no real mid ground for healing. its either so little that any regen can fix it, or its so strong that there was nothing I could do

travis_biscuit: I'm fond of your general concept given in the attack-heal synergy section. Most tank/dps combo attacks lead to supporting another action when carried out, such as filling a bar or making another button available. If healers have a one button attack "rotation" then giving that button a secondary effect that is at least slightly significant is a good start.

cruye9633: I would be so down to have more elaborate healer rotations

cruye9633: I've played M8 normal a few times recently and it's actually so fun? It feels like a middle difficulty between normal content and extreme, where I actually have to sit up in the gamer chair and actively try to keep people alive, but I don't need to spend hours waiting on PF and reading raidplans

trackerx495: The triage healing, as a scholar, feels very relevant. I've talked about it before, but it kind of bugs me that scholar is supposed to be "The shield" healer. Even more than Sage. Yet.... The shields are the the GCDs. Things that aren't supposed to be used unless absolutely necessary. I guess you can change focus and say SCH isn't a shield healer really. It's a pet healer, but even then I think it could get more in that area and the stuff we do get don't really flow well together.

(Granted I'm a casual healer at best, but this is just what I've noticed)

TheFrantic5: My theory over healer rotation simplicity is that the devs wanted healers of every single skill level to have maximum awareness of their surroundings in order to avoid mechanics.

cruye9633: I wanna see a fight that does the thing where it sets everyone's HP to 1

but it also sets the healers' MP to 1

it'd be funny

(just the healers cause otherwise other roles would be very disproportionately affected, some not caring and others being fucked over massivelly)

kay_faraday: the rant about kardia around 15 minutes in sounds filled with rage, how long have you been holding that in???

Mocita: Reminds me of something that happened at the first Fan Fest over a decade ago. There was a challenge wheel that Yoshida spun, and the first challenge was ‘Garuda EX 1 healer.’ The group that went first said, “Easy” and completed it first try. After that, Yoshida said he was going to make EX fights harder.

Taldemarr: Excellent discussion video, you put together the issues far better than I could.

I don't have any concrete suggestions to offer at the time, but I find it's a massive letdown to have all four healers boil down to the same two button damage filler. One of them could absolutely rock the current setup, but any variation of filler gameplay would be super welcome.

Bistai949: Pretty good video. I think it gives a pretty basic overview of the issues with healers as they currently stand. The problem isn't with the core idea of how healers operate, it's that their kits don't reflect this design well.

I think a combination of suggestion 2 and 3 are the best ways of fixing healers in the game, ultimately. I don't think adding more of an attack rotation to healers is a good idea because it dilutes the healer role. I think it's okay and even good that healers contribute DPS to the party, but more DPS buttons just turns me into a green-flavored DPS. We want more diversity in the game's roles, not less diversity. I think the current single nuke dot with a couple extra things sprinkled in is more than sufficient as long as the healing part is more interesting. No healer rotation, please.

As for how to implement suggestion 2 and 3, I think the best way to do this is to use WHM's lilies as an inspiration. At the moment, they are the only thing in the game that does a decent job at this. The idea is to make healing a game of DPS loss management. If GCD heals cause healers to lose DPS, we can lean into that by proving healers with resources that mitigate or outright prevent that DPS loss by refunding lost damage. If the healer runs out of resources, they can still heal, they just don't get the damage refund. On top of that, we can make healers work to regain their resources. During time spent not healing, healers can work to regain the resources through their own unique mechanics. This should create a system where good healers are rewarded with better damage, while mediocre healers are still able to keep everyone alive and both groups should, theoretically, be more active when it comes to healing.

As a very, very basic example, lets imagine a version of WHM where casting any GCD heal generates a lily. Then, the WHM spends the lilies by using misery to refund their damage (somewhat similar to how things work now). However, in this example, lets also give misery a high cast time similar to PCT's drawings. Suddenly, healing becomes a lot more involved. Now, the healer is spending resources in bursts to keep the party alive, then finding downtime to cast misery to refund their damage. If they can't find an opportunity, they lose damage because they're capped on lilies can't generate more. If they can find an opportunity, their damage lost from healing is refunded and they're ready to generate more the next time they heal. Then we can add some tools to help manage lilies more effectively at later levels on top of buffs to increase healing effectiveness, and suddenly we have a healer centered around GCD heals that is rewarded with consistent damage as long as they maintain healing efficiency and properly manage their resources. Of course, there's more specific things you'd need to change in this scenario, but I think this gives a good foundation to build off of.

Of course, that's just one job, but based on this idea, I think you can find ways to do similar sorts of things with all the healers.

GamerNym: "Does moving the Kardia really matter" LOL I dare these people to try an Extreme or Savage without Kardia. THEY might not feel it but their co-healer defitnitely will.

JustDj317: I feel like ideally, a healers kit should have the healing and damage portions compliment eachother, having healing give better damage options, and visa-versa, while still leaving them with some base options for adapting

grottosstuff: i think 5 potency on dia would fix everything

Manslayer-eo1nh: We had a fun an interactive healer with Astro before the entire rework.

nyito8548: One thing I don't see touched on much, is the underlying reasons WHY the change over to the "new school" of healers attacking a lot happened. In most old school MMOs, MP was such a tight resource and healing required so intense that MP management was the primary concern. When MP management became much less of a problem, time (GCD) management became the primary concern. Underlying all of this is that, so long as enrage timers exist, squeezing as much damage as possible out of healers is going to be what the high end groups do, and that mindset will trickle down to the rest of the playerbase, regardless of how relevant it is for a piece of content and becoming the "correct" way to play.

In my mind, so long as MP is "free" (more or less), there's no getting away from the "healers primarily attack" meta. This means the main way to tweak how many GCDs healers spend on healing is to make healing GCDs necessary. Probably by weakening oGCD healing options significantly so they become supplemental tools (oGCD mitigation like Aquaveil, Sacred Soil are good options that should stay) and making damage, even in casual content, more regular to force healers to use more GCDs on healing, and attack "when they can."

The elephant in the room with this kind of fundamental change is that, because FFXIV doesn't abandon old content much, such a fundamental change would require a rebalance of literally every dungeon and raid ever made. Since that is such a monumental task, they're likely to err on the side of ensuring said content remains beatable, not "beatable but challenging", which usually means such content gets nerfed to a point it won't really teach the lesson of "you will need to GCD heal" and we end up back where we are now in an effort to reduce new player friction, as the first 90% of the game didn't teach them the lessons they needed to learn for the last 10%.

AkaneAkai: I started playing in Shb and started with healers, and by far my favorite healer to play was AST. Shb ast being incredibly intensive with high apm and constant target swapping really made me always happy to play it. Unfortunately after, because of how intensive it was, it was simplified multiple times so more people could "enjoy" the job.

I did stop playing for a bit in EW, came back during launch DT, and haven't played again since. It just never felt the same :(

I miss my high apm healer

javi7636: I absolutely want more synergy between healing and attacking. And rather than Kardia, I actually think WHM's Lillies are the gold standard for synergy. They managed to design a healer where you actually do want to GCD heal and it's always a benefit to do so (with those particular spells). This ends up making Lily heals surprisingly versatile, since you can use them even when you don't need the healing--as a movement tool for example.

I've also played Fellowship and enjoyed it, but the trouble with that comparison is that those healers are expected to spend much of their time healing and not attacking. For them it makes sense for attacking to supplement their primary activity. Short of a complete rework of all healers, I don't think that job design would work for FF14. Healers in 14 already have more healing than they know what to do with, so supplementing it more doesn't help with anything.

Instead, I think we'd have more success leaning in to the attacking side of things. Treat that as the core, and have healing be a necessary interruption that seamlessly leads back into attacking. That's essentially how they play already, so we just need their skills to reflect that.

ZeldaFan2004: This may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like Healer DPS should be buffed. I feel like tanks are too powerful as they are and them being so powerful negatively impacts Healers by comparison. Tanks are defensive powerhouses (as they should be), they deal good damage, and they are able to heal themselves as well as the party. It's no wonder challenge groups ditch healers when you may as well just have the tank be the healer instead.

If we are serious about repairing the role trinity, I think Healer DPS should be buffed so that they are neck and neck with tanks on the DPS charts. Both roles are 2 sides of the support role coin, both should be dealing similar amounts of damage since both are expected to support the team just enough to get by and DPS as much as they can.

Scribblersys: A healer that plays like Red Mage with Dualcast could be fun, spend GCD on an attack which then gives you an instant heal cast afterwards, or vice versa

ladyteekitty: for the attacking, I'd love to see something similar to how pvp handles it.

attack button turns into a slightly better version for a 3 part "combo" all on the same button.

3 different animations, minimal better potency for the combo. that way the single target and aoe "rotation" would at least be visually less boring and have you slightly more engaged.

then there could be 2 ogcd attacks. one as an aoe attack 60s cd, the other single target 30s cd. they would both restore 10% mp and buff the next gcd healing action done by 20%.

class kit fundamentals should also be available at 50. like whitemage having all 3 lillies at 50, just with slightly lowered potency

madmephit2253: Back in the day, I did a few raids in WoW. It's been a long time since I played that so I'm short on the details, but what I remember is healing being a full-time job during a raid.

I miss that. Healers in FFXIV can be so dreadfully boring

cordrac: compulsively watching another banger healer discourse vid of yours in hopes that you as a famous person will lead to change that I as a small fry would be grateful for

Max44321: Healer really should not be a role, it should be Support instead. Then you can add viable and lasting crowd control, teamwide buffs, enemy debuffs, alongside the barrier/protection/healing. Also pets, pets would be nice too.

Dec 07 2025

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