Healer DPS - enjoyable or a chore?

[ty_taurus]

That's a fair assessment, and I imagine many healers feel the same, but it's fine if some healer jobs allow for that gameplay style, because at the end of the day, WHM, SCH, and AST will still be around.

[Spiroglyph]

For me it's fun. I can't really answer the question of "is healer DPS fun or not" in a vacuum, because from an objective POV pushing one or two buttons over and over again doesn't seem very engaging. What I do like about it, though, is the part that gets me wondering just how/when to cast my heals, considering the following:

1) I can't let people die
2) I want to heal only the least possible amount in order to DPS the most I can

So the fun part of it is not the repetitive casting of whatever offensive spells a healer has, it's trying to improve how to balance both healing and DPSing in order to make a run as smooth as possible and walking out knowing you not only kept people alive, but made the run considerably faster than it would have been had you sat there twiddling your thumbs.

[Sylvain]

I find healer dps rather boring, I kinda like putting the DoTs but spamming Stone/Malefic/Broil is just boring


Honestly, I'd rather have to spam cure than dps skills. But since boss in this game hit like wet noodle, unless there is a massive balance rework in 5.0, this is definitely not going to happen.
Which makes me wonder if I should still play healer. I love healing but spending 80% of a fight spamming Malefic just doesn't feel right.
Being able to dps because the group plays well and take no damage should be a reward for great play, not the default mode. (granted you dps more when people don't die / take useless damage)

It's like, "oh healer are only useful to heal that big boom once every 30sec, you can be afk the rest of the fight or perhaps try to pewpew a little."

Obviously the less people fail the more prominent this becomes.

So, do we have to dps? Not really, not until you reach last savage and ultimate. (I mean if we hit the enrage on tsukuyomi and no one died, I definitely do not consider it's my fault as a healer because I failed to poor in enough malefic/broil)
Should we? well unless you enjoy standing there like a retard 80% of an encounter.... perhaps you should

Is it a chore? to me it is. DoTing is ok but having more malefic cast than any other action combined is just lame. And i'm not even a great healer dps

So I have this argument against Square's standpoint that players who don't heal or tank will not heal or tank no matter if there's a new healer or tank or not. I totally believe there is an opportunity to add in new play styles to healers and tanks similarly to how DPS has melee, ranged, and casters.

I unfortunately do not agree with you (but I wish I would)
Some player might play a healer / tank if there were more options. But many players simply don't like it, wether is it the gameplay or the responsability part.

I mean, my bf is litterally traumatised everytime he has to heal. Even if the boss does 1 AoE every 1min he almost has a heartattack everytime the AoE happens (even if no one drops below 40% without being shielded)
I healed with him a few times (simple stuff like Lakshmi) , I didn't even bother talking about "dpsing". He was litterally spamming the tank with cure1 the entire fight. And trust me every tank buster made him panick, even if the tank wouldn't drop below 50%

He's a special case, I grant you that. But many player just cannot handle tank/heal because they feel they have the group responsability. (Which is funny because technically speaking, bad dps are as bad as bad tank/heal. If your dps suck the boss won't die)

[Maeka]

The problem with rebalancing so that normal dungeon bosses are hard and hit like a truck, is that a lot of lesser-skilled healers are suddenly unable to clear 4man dungeons.

I mean, look at Bardam's Mettle, or Aurum Vale. I still see healers in there failing to keep people alive, especially when people multipull.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't relish the idea of wipefests in MSQ dungeons. If you want hard/engaging challenge and 4mans aren't good enough for you, then do some Ex Primals or go to Savage Raids instead. No need to insist the bar be raised just because it isn't challenging enough for you when there are other options.

It's healthy for a game to have the main base content be a bit easier as long as there is harder content for those who want it.

[Adeacia]

I dps as a healer as much as I can because I enjoy doing it. I like when tanks pull everything and I can holy spam.

I enjoy the challenge of trying to keep everyone alive while doing as much damage as I can get away with.

[IttyBitty]

Healer DPS isn't really a chore, but the way it's implemented leaves a lot to be desired. Spamming cure is functionally no different from spamming Stone. I don't see why anybody would enjoy it more from a gameplay perspective. Even from a "feel" or "theme" perspective that's a pretty hollow reason for preferring to press a healing button over a DPS one. One makes a bar go up. Other makes a bar go down.

Healing is at its most fun when you have to juggle tasks. Current content doesn't really give you much to juggle. Debuff removal is practically non existent since cleanses were thrown into cross role and practically all debuffs can't be removed anyway. Heals are immensely powerful and incoming damage is relatively low outside of spikes. So we're left with optimal "rotations" that boil down to "maintain dots, spam nuke, throw out a heal when necessary", which don't really help things. So they either need to change up the way they make content, or change up how healers do DPS.

[Risvertasashi]

The problem with rebalancing so that normal dungeon bosses are hard and hit like a truck, is that a lot of lesser-skilled healers are suddenly unable to clear 4man dungeons.

There's a little more to it than this. Although you use 4 man dungeons as an example, this problem exists even in the most difficult savage raids.

It essentially comes down to damage in FFXIV being all burst oriented. So it doesn't really matter if you're in that 4 man roulette dungeon, or trying to kill Kefka. In a Savage raid you'll maybe need a shield to survive the hit, but in both cases: you heal up the tank/party after damage, and then there's nothing to do but DPS.

Even if dungeons were tuned to hit like a truck, this facet of FFXIV's design would still exist.

IttyBitty pretty much nailed it:

Healing is at its most fun when you have to juggle tasks. Current content doesn't really give you much to juggle. Debuff removal is practically non existent since cleanses were thrown into cross role and practically all debuffs can't be removed anyway. Heals are immensely powerful and incoming damage is relatively low outside of spikes. So we're left with optimal "rotations" that boil down to "maintain dots, spam nuke, throw out a heal when necessary", which don't really help things. So they either need to change up the way they make content, or change up how healers do DPS.

But it's worth emphasizing this is true even in savage content.

[Maeka]

Well the idea is if you're having to heal more often, you do a lot less DPSing. Half of the reason why the healers do so much DPS is that they have far, FAR more raw healing power than they should actually NEED, and you get these 5 seconds here, 10 seconds there that you're doing jack all, so why not throw some rocks?

But throwing rocks is incredibly boring, especially in easier content where there's no danger. Yeah maybe savage raids and ex primals you need to time it well and weave it in, and do it right or die, but it's still symptoms of the same problem, but one without an easy solution. We could do all WoW-like where a tank goes from 20% to 80% to 20% to 80% needing constant heals or they die in 3 seconds flat, but that's not fun for the healer. I HATED WoW healing with a passion when I tried it. It was terrible.

But yet XIV's healing gets boring at times.

I think having more than 1 button DPS might help a little. At least then if I need to solo quest as WHM, it wouldn't be so flippin' BORING doing nothing but casting Stone repeatedly. No, I don't want three 3-button combos to switch up, or swapping between 6 different Ver spells, or what-not, but could we go past the 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 stage perhaps?

[Risvertasashi]

I think having more than 1 button DPS might help a little. At least then if I need to solo quest as WHM, it wouldn't be so flippin' BORING doing nothing but casting Stone repeatedly. No, I don't want three 3-button combos to switch up, or swapping between 6 different Ver spells, or what-not, but could we go past the 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 stage perhaps?

There are alternative solutions. Give healers buffs to toss out. On the GCD, not as cooldowns. With a duration similar to regen or aspected benefic. And to avoid the 1 button spam problem... create combos you can progress through. For example, start with a 2% DPS buff. If you hit a 3 second window at the end of the buff, you can turn it into a 4% DPS buff. If the recipient deals X damage within that timeframe, you can proc them to a 6% damage buff. Etc.

So you can have a minigame of trying to get and keep someone or several someones at the max buff level.

[Jade3173]

defiantly don't find healer DPS fun and is the main reason I switched to an actual DPS when 4.0 dropped. Throughout, admittedly only towards the end of 2.0, and all of 3.0 being a healer main sucked because of how much time I was spamming Stone/Malefic rather than Cure/Benefic. AST cards help alleviate the problem somewhat as it's more support than DPS but does land in the problem of being oGCD and not taking up time that I spend DPSing. While I think it'll never happen in a million years, would love for 5.0 to come around and make it so healers are healers and not green DPS that toss out heals every X amount of seconds (and they toss those heals out via Regen and/or oGCD heals to for max DPS)