Isn't playing WHM optimally going completely against what SE wants healers to be?

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Originally Posted by Elamys

It's a legitimate flaw in the game's design because it has been stated by the game's designers that they want healers to heal most of the time. It's not a matter of taste.

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Never really take what a game developer says at face value. The community will play the game how they want to play it.

Nintendo intended Smash Bros Melee to be a casual party game. The community turned it into a glitch/tech-monster game with wave-dashing and other advanced techniques. Rocket jumping in FPS games was not intended by the developers, but became a community created technique for greater movement. Even old Mario Bros games can be played at a considerably higher level than what the developers intended.

If there is a huge DPS check that a group has to overcome, they are not going to play the way the developers intended the game to be played. They will try to win.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I do agree with the view that that the class team seems to be in a bit of a mess over the direction and design of healers currently. But the content itself is pretty impeccable considering what they've got to work with.

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Isn't the whole point of this thread supposed to be ABOUT how the direction and design of healers is kinda bad? I mean, that's the way I'm taking it. Even looking at your logs (sorry, you put yourself out there for spying haha), as a self-professed "conservative" healer, you are still doing about 1 DPSing spell on Neo Exdeath for every 2 healing spells you cast. Don't you think that's a little high, for what is supposedly the hardest healing content we have in this game? (It's also clear you're carrying the healing load, as your AST co-healer's DPS abilities outnumber their healing ones significantly, skewing the values for the fight further.)

I'm not trying to antagonize, and I'm not really going to comment on what the ambiguous plethora of quotes from the producer of this game are meant to mean, since as Lulunami pointed out, the community is the one who generally shapes how the game is played at the upper echelons of skill. But can anyone honestly look at healing in raids in this game and think that it's well-designed? When even a healer who is handling "most" of the healing in a two-healer party is still spending 1/3rd of their GCDs on DPS?

To me, it's not about never wanting to have to cast a single offensive ability in this game in my healing career ever again. It's just about wanting the ratio to be a bit more balanced insofar as what you'd generally EXPECT from a "healer" role. Maybe some will still disagree, but I just want to clarify that point. I'm not "anti healer DPS" in the strictest sense. I just don't think we should be spending such a stupidly significant portion of our time DPSing just because our actual healing abilities are tuned too high and are on too short of cooldowns relative to the amount of HPS raids require.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Isn't the whole point of this thread supposed to be ABOUT how the direction and design of healers is kinda bad? I mean, that's the way I'm taking it.

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Perhaps, but unless I'm misreading something, the OP is basing this on the assumption that Yoshida is anti healer DPS. An assumption which I don't think is quite correct. Rather I think he wants groups to be able to make the choice themselves, more hardcore teams may require it to clear turns within the first month or two, whereas casual groups that come at it further down the line won't be nearly as reliant on it.

It's pretty hard to defend the current class design of all 3 healers tho, I definitely can't argue with that. When you compare what we have here to even failed MMOs like Warhammer Online, SE's efforts here seem really rather uninspiring by comparison.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Even looking at your logs (sorry, you put yourself out there for spying haha), as a self-professed "conservative" healer, you are still doing about 1 DPSing spell on Neo Exdeath for every 2 healing spells you cast. Don't you think that's a little high, for what is supposedly the hardest healing content we have in this game?

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I suppose it depends on the angle you're looking at it from. If I compare myself to Elia, Fretty or indeed many of the other regular raid healers in my FC, I'm massively overcautious and healing far more than I need to be, whereas from a more casual viewpoint, It might appear that I'm pushing a ton of DPS. Also note that my DPS throughput is steered somewhat both by my co healer's desire to push our combined DPS upwards as well as my Tanks drawing a bit of a line on my enmity generation vs O4S' style cramping enmity resets with each Grand Cross =(

Raid content is always going to be a compromise and I think Omega does it pretty well given the circumstances especially after the snooze fest that was Creator. Both O3S and O4S are a great challenge at iLvl 320 and even with my team being slower than we'd like in getting our clears, I've enjoyed myself in the process.

It's going to be interesting to see how many of these issues get addressed with super savage. Not having to factor in iLvl progression is going to help the content team tune this thing much tighter imo. I'll be surprised if it's SCOB savage grade, but I'm hoping it'll at least be on par with A3S if not harder.

No offence taken whatsoever tho! Solid discussion and debate is always a good thing <3

My issue with the healers is that AST is a better version of both WHM and SCH when it comes to role individuality, SCH healing is extremely mana-draining and Aetherflow usage isn't all that great while also having nerfed dps, and WHM has to dps as often as possible in savage raids. If they made AST an inbetween of the other 2 healers (nerf shielding and regen to NOT be better than other 2 jobs), lightened the dps load of WHM and gave it back some uniqueness, and buffed SCH shields then all three would be in a much better spot

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Originally Posted by lulunami

Never really take what a game developer says at face value. The community will play the game how they want to play it.

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Yes, but this is a game subject to constant, regular updates, with changes made based on the devs's vision for the game. Remember that small potency nerf NIN got a few weeks ago to ah...Gust Slash, I think it was? That was because players were using a different rotation than the devs intended. This entire thread is about how huge of a mess healer design is in right now. The devs have one goal, which is to minimize how much healers DPS, which they've made numerous steps for. Their goal isn't to get rid of healer DPS entirely, and they're not going to actively stop people from it. But they've said they still don't want people to DPS as healers as much as they are. But the changes they've made so far don't reflect that. The entire structure of damage taken vs. healing power in the game would have to be changed.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

This entire thread is about how huge of a mess healer design is in right now. The devs have one goal, which is to minimize how much healers DPS, which they've made numerous steps for. Their goal isn't to get rid of healer DPS entirely, and they're not going to actively stop people from it. But they've said they still don't want people to DPS as healers as much as they are. But the changes they've made so far don't reflect that. The entire structure of damage taken vs. healing power in the game would have to be changed.

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They are trying to satisfy both the players on the skill floor and the players at the skill ceiling. Tanks, healers, and DPS at the skill floor do not play at the same efficiency as players at the skill ceiling.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

The devs have one goal, which is to minimize how much healers DPS ....... But they've said they still don't want people to DPS as healers as much as they are.

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You're referring to the following?

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Originally Posted by Yoshida

We didn’t like seeing healers doing entire dungeons in Cleric Stance, especially if they forget to switch back and heal!

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Look closer:

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Originally Posted by Yoshida

We didn’t like seeing healers doing entire dungeons in Cleric Stance, especially if they forget to switch back and heal!

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Originally Posted by Yoshida

entire dungeons

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You're basing your argument on a quote that you're taking waaaaaaaaaay out of context if I'm not mistaken? Please correct me and link a quote that says otherwise if I'm wrong tho <3

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I suppose it depends on the angle you're looking at it from. If I compare myself to Elia, Fretty or indeed many of the other regular raid healers in my FC, I'm massively overcautious and healing far more than I need to be, whereas from a more casual viewpoint, It might appear that I'm pushing a ton of DPS. Also note that my DPS throughput is steered somewhat both by my co healer's desire to push our combined DPS upwards as well as my Tanks drawing a bit of a line on my enmity generation vs O4S' style cramping enmity resets with each Grand Cross =(

Raid content is always going to be a compromise and I think Omega does it pretty well given the circumstances especially after the snooze fest that was Creator. Both O3S and O4S are a great challenge at iLvl 320 and even with my team being slower than we'd like in getting our clears, I've enjoyed myself in the process.

It's going to be interesting to see how many of these issues get addressed with super savage. Not having to factor in iLvl progression is going to help the content team tune this thing much tighter imo. I'll be surprised if it's SCOB savage grade, but I'm hoping it'll at least be on par with A3S if not harder.

No offence taken whatsoever tho! Solid discussion and debate is always a good thing <3

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Maybe I didn't ask my question very clearly, since I didn't really get an answer to what I was looking for. I wasn't criticizing how your static does things, as that's not my nature or my business, but was rather using your own statements about how you divide the healing and DPSing load in your group to make a general statement about your FFLogs data with regards to how much time healers have to DPS at even the hardest levels of content in the game.

My question is, as someone who is self-admittedly doing more of the healing in your static than your co-healer (due to reasons that work best for your team, which again, is perfectly fine), how do you feel about still having the time in this game to dedicate 1/3rd of your GCDs to DPS? Do you think that means the healing is well-designed in this game or that there's an issue with how powerful we are, at either the healing end or the DPSing end? Do you think that SE's push towards WHM having the best throughput on both the healing end AND the DPSing end rather than just the healing end implies that the developers know that healing power is something of an afterthought in this game when it comes to deciding raid compositions?

On a final note, thanks for being willing to engage me in some in-depth, rational discussion on the healer DPS subject. If anyone else has any insight, feel free to hop in.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Maybe I didn't ask my question very clearly, since I didn't really get an answer to what I was looking for. I wasn't criticizing how your static does things, as that's not my nature or my business, but was rather using your own statements about how you divide the healing and DPSing load in your group to make a general statement about your FFLogs data with regards to how much time healers have to DPS at even the hardest levels of content in the game.

My question is, as someone who is self-admittedly doing more of the healing in your static than your co-healer (due to reasons that work best for your team, which again, is perfectly fine), how do you feel about still having the time in this game to dedicate 1/3rd of your GCDs to DPS? Do you think that means the healing is well-designed in this game or that there's an issue with how powerful we are, at either the healing end or the DPSing end? Do you think that SE's push towards WHM having the best throughput on both the healing end AND the DPSing end rather than just the healing end implies that the developers know that healing power is something of an afterthought in this game when it comes to deciding raid compositions?

On a final note, thanks for being willing to engage me in some in-depth, rational discussion on the healer DPS subject. If anyone else has any insight, feel free to hop in.

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@WHM question - I felt S-E made the shift to do this too alleviate the WHMs concerns that "they have nothing unique". By providing both the highest HPS and DPS throughput, as well as best MP regeneration, they could give WHMs something unique that still respected their definition of "pure".

In terms of content design - would I say this well designed for healers? From a pure healing perspective - no, it's not because when you think of traditional healers you think of healers that need to constantly watch HP bars and have the quick reactions to gauge sudden changes in the fight and respond appropriately. This type of healing is also quite stressful and not everyone has the capability to do so.

I do feel the healing design in the game is extremely new player friendly and that was the primary intent for S-E - they wanted to design healers so those with low healing experience can still play the class successfully, thus setting the bar fairly low compared to healers in other MMOs. This leave those who have much higher healing experience many windows of opportunity to contribute heavily in the DPS department. As a tangent discussion, I do feel the healer's DPS spells are as potent as they are to allow them pass through story line content without too much hindrance. This leads to times where combined healer DPS contributes 10-15% of a total 8-man savage raid when both are playing well. I won't necessarily say that the developers consider healing as an afterthought, but given the quality of healers I've seen through my time PuGing as a non-healer in non-savage content, I can safely say that a lot of healers won't be able to handle the checks thrown out by the developers despite the rigid nature of each fight.

On the note of rigid nature, the one thing I will say is I can appreciate the scripted nature of each fight and how it allows for fight optimization versus independent optimization. Nothing like going into WoW raid at a relatively average gear level and then basically have your MT die to a one shot because the boss critted you and the MT didn't evade / block / parry and their defensive CDs were offline (talking about BC here, haven't played since then). If the MT dies and is doing mechanics properly then it's entirely up to the healer and I like that aspect of it. The dances are scripted - this means less reactions and more planning. This allows to maximization of CD usage versus saving them as o-snap buttons. While I know this type of content isn't appealing to everyone, I can enjoy taking the good this style of content provides and still gaze with a critical eye on what this style fails to do which is provide suitable heal checks. I do feel White Hole is a good step in the right direction because it can't be overgeared if you will. In fact it also encourage spreading the gear out towards healers as well because if HP values get too high it becomes more difficult for a lower ilvl healer to keep HP bars literally topped off for the mechanic.

To summarize the previous wall of text - I feel healing is designed to have a low barrier of entry and that in combination with the scripted nature of fights to reduce RNG elements leads to many opportunities for healers to contribute DPS for their group. This means the healer design is lacking at times but the content design overall is really engaging and rewards those players who can plan out their ability usages in conjunction with the group dynamic. I don't feel this is bad for overall content design but I can appreciate why experienced healers may find this discouraging.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Perhaps, but unless I'm misreading something, the OP is basing this on the assumption that Yoshida is anti healer DPS. An assumption which I don't think is quite correct. Rather I think he wants groups to be able to make the choice themselves,

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That's part of it, yeah. I don't think that SE is completely anti-healer DPS. I just think they're too indecisive about what they want healers to be, and that's hurting the role as a whole.

With this indecisive way of thinking, content is being designed in a way that caters to both playstyles. All this does in the end though, is create a situation where there's too little damage to heal through, which puts healers who just want to heal in a bad spot, because there's not enough damage going out to warrant you not doing anything else.

I'm just repeating myself at this point, but It's just a shame that healers are in such a state.

It's also worth stating optimal play doesn't mean a hyper specific manner of play. It simply means never letting a GCD rest, unless some circumstance is in play that would make you stop. (Like Blighted Bouqet)

Optimal play is a contextual thing. You heal when you need to heal, you prep when you need to prep, you nuke when you need to nuke. It's not a once-per-X thing, or a 'tank only gets healed at 10% thing' (But did you die?), or 'only do this' thing.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

With this indecisive way of thinking, content is being designed in a way that caters to both playstyles. All this does in the end though, is create a situation where there's too little damage to heal through, which puts healers who just want to heal in a bad spot, because there's not enough damage going out to warrant you not doing anything else.

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Content is designed in a way that its challenging now and accessible down the road. That Yoshida is willing to let healer DPS be the X factor doesn't mean he's against it, and I seriously doubt they aren't tuning arount it to some degree... but limiting it or balancing against it would not only raise the bar for world firsts, it would raise the bar for everybody in the long run. The man wants more people raiding, not less.

Maybe its sacrilegious to suggest but if one healer's kit isn't doing it for you... try another? Especially after taking a year off I love the current WHM DPS kit but I absolutely hated Scholar's DPS kit when I mained it during ARR. I dunno, I'm more about being comfy than "unique" or whatever.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

My question is, as someone who is self-admittedly doing more of the healing in your static than your co-healer (due to reasons that work best for your team, which again, is perfectly fine), how do you feel about still having the time in this game to dedicate 1/3rd of your GCDs to DPS? Do you think that means the healing is well-designed in this game or that there's an issue with how powerful we are, at either the healing end or the DPSing end?

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That's a really tough question to give a straight and simple answer to =(

Personally I feel that the DPS we can do is in about the right place, but the HPS we can put out is perhaps too bursty given the comparatively tiny HP pools and limited survivability that we have. The fact that I can typically top a 50k+ hp tank from next to nothing in ~5 seconds with oGCDs really limits the options on the table for the content creators.

As far as the sheer number of GCDs I'm using on healing vs DPSing goes, you're right in that it's a surprising number of GCDs for someone like myself who isn't especially DPS orientated. It's not like I'm doing huge amounts of optimisation to achieve this, I'm simply filling in as many gaps as I can with dots and stones. I do think that O4S does a better job of masking this issue than A12S did tho so perhaps that's why I'm not particularly jaded about it.

As far as the alternatives SE could go with... The issue here is that there's no perfect approach that doesn't step on someone's toes.

Everquest was perhaps the poster child for making healers do little else beyond healing in raids. Certain Everquest healers were highly powerful and I'd go as far as saying that my Shaman's soloing capability was borderline absurd. Yet my role in raids pretty much boiled down to maintaining a 7 minute debuff and keeping junkie mages and clerics fed with HP even tho I might have been soloing the exact same content an hour or two ago to 'reserve' the zone. FFXI's raiding was near enough the same story with the majority of supports and healers having very mundane roles irrespective of their prowess elsewhere in the game.

Perhaps the closest match for what we have in FFXIV now would be my times PvPing as a Resto/elemental hybrid specced Shaman in early WoW. That made for fantastically fluid and enjoyable gameplay and I was never lost for something to do in pretty much any PvP situation in or outside of an instance. Of course there my support abilities (WF totems etc) had as much if not more value than my personal DPS or even heals in some situations and given the mess that we've got over AST, I don't think that's something that Yoshida's class team has the courage (or even talent perhaps) to pull off whilst still keeping things balanced.

Overall I think what we've got now strikes a reasonable balance and things are perhaps better than what we've had prior. To achieve more healing without ruining some other aspect of our gameplay or massively ramping up the difficulty for healers I suspect SE will need to take a page out of WotLK's book by substantially buffing HP pools, making healers work far harder to refill them and making it more of a battle of attrition rather than simply a case of 'you fail, you dead'.

I'd argue Cataclysm took a better approach to triage healing. WotLK, at least in the final tier, was pretty much the mitigate or die, burst heal them up, except it happened on a frequency that would pretty much kept the healers healing.

Cataclysm slowed that down a fair amount, introducing the idea of a basic kit for everyone (The Fast/inefficient, the medium/baseline, and the slow/efficient heal), while giving them unique tools across the classes that solidified them as better in certain areas. (Druids and hots, Priests and mitigation, Shamans and Totems, Paladins and Beacon). We more or less have that now, but the encounters are formulaic scripts rather than, say, an assortment of five mechanics that the boss will choose based on RNG/other criteria.

Imagine for a moment that Catastrophes tankbuster isn't telegraphed with a cast bar (Though it would mean that a At-Level tank doesn't -need- a CD to live - if they're at full health). It changes the dynamic of the encounter because you don't have an exact timing for the tankbuster. Just a window of when it can happen.

Now make the tank buster capable of being used at any time (though with a cooldown) and that changes things further. There's a level of urgency that exists simply because the boss isn't a spreadsheet of what happens when, and that changes the entire dynamic of the healing game.

^ it changes it from figuring out the most optimal healing/dps rotation into whack-a-mole. I got bored with classic WoW's healingn style because it basically amounted to staring at HP bars instead of understanding mechanics and planning for big heal checks while doing the actual fight. I'd just press lesser heal over and over again canceling it at the last cast to conserve mana, or letting it go off if the tank fell low enough.

IDK how it is now, but the classic WoW style basically made healers slaves to the hp bar, and in 40-man raids it basically covered the majority of your screen so you couldn't watch the action even if you wanted to.

I had a lot of fun with Tera's action-based healing style that actually forced me to look at bosses and mechanics, and I like that FF14 allows me to do things similarly even though it's tab-target.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Cataclysm slowed that down a fair amount, introducing the idea of a basic kit for everyone (The Fast/inefficient, the medium/baseline, and the slow/efficient heal), while giving them unique tools across the classes that solidified them as better in certain areas. (Druids and hots, Priests and mitigation, Shamans and Totems, Paladins and Beacon). We more or less have that now, but the encounters are formulaic scripts rather than, say, an assortment of five mechanics that the boss will choose based on RNG/other criteria.

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I quit right around the beginning of Pandas so I can't comment on WoW nowadays but in hindsight I dunno if I remember healer gear checks like Heroic Deathwing's Spine all that fondly. IIRC how the mechanic worked is that you had to spam overheals to clear a leech type of debuff on your party before any of your heals would reach them.

I guess I'm largely pro healer DPS because as I see it the alternative is gimmick fights.

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Originally Posted by gti443

I quit right around the beginning of Pandas so I can't comment on WoW nowadays but in hindsight I dunno if I remember healer gear checks like Heroic Deathwing's Spine all that fondly. IIRC how the mechanic worked is that you had to spam overheals to clear a leech type of debuff on your party before any of your heals would reach them.

I guess I'm largely pro healer DPS because as I see it the alternative is gimmick fights.

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I generally boil things down to the baseline. I see no difference between a game forcing you to spam a basic heal and a game forcing you to spam a basic damage spell. The targets differ, the interaction doesn't. Thus, Healer damage or not, it's all a button press. The simple Healer damage 'rotations' in this game only solidify that further. You push buttons. If the healing needs to happen, it's the heal button. If the healing doesn't need to happen, it's the Damage button.

I... hrm. Going back to Yoshida's comments I think something he specifically wants to avoid is making encounters as... binary as you're presenting. I think that's part of the appeal of FF over something like WoW... you seem to remember Cataclysm as "dynamic" but aside from some random effects I remember encounter design being very gimmicky and on rails. Since the beginning FF has had a lot more room for... improvisation, and it seems the intention is to keep it that way.

True Savage notwithstanding. I'm hopeful its on par with SCOB Savage but I guess we'll see.

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Originally Posted by gti443

I... hrm. Going back to Yoshida's comments I think something he specifically wants to avoid is making encounters as... binary as you're presenting.

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I haven't played WoW since Pandaria, but the times mentioned thus far (LK, Cataclysm) and BC (Best tier), every boss encounter was a bag of tricks used based on certain criteria. That criteria could be RNG based, party position based, etc. The mechanics are not that different from FF14, but the way they are chosen and the order they are used are what changes from encounter to encounter. The Raid Party in WoW must adjust to the mechanics that come out, not pre-plan around them (The Spreadsheet comment)

Edit: That isn't to say there were not some timed mechanics. WoW wasn't a masterclass of boss design, but it's easy to see the trimming of certain paradigms from WoW early, to WoW late, and the MMOs that followed in its footsteps.

In FF14, Savage Encounters tend to be tightly scheduled dances. Hali's second half is actually a refreshing difference, even if only for one specific mechanic (Tile stomping) but otherwise it still maintains a 'Nothing else changes from first to last'. This allows an encounter to be 'harder', but only in a shallow sense. It's a memory fight. It's not dynamic. This is why a Healer can plan GCDs ahead of time, because you know when the tankbusters are coming in, you know when the raid busters are coming in, and you know when Regen, Excog, and Essential Dignity are all you need.

There's actually not a lot of flexibility in FF14's encounter design. If you clear an encounter in FF14, odds are you cleared it in a way that's 90-95% the same as another team.

Using Burning Crusade as an example, there are a fair amount of examples where the Boss Kill strategy wildly changed based on the Raiding team in question, because the mechanics had to be handled, but the vast arenas, larger parties, and more than pass/fail approach to those mechanics allowed them to be handled in a variety of ways.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

You're basing your argument on a quote that you're taking waaaaaaaaaay out of context if I'm not mistaken? Please correct me and link a quote that says otherwise if I'm wrong tho <3

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It's not an all or nothing thing. I'm not saying the devs want healers to never DPS, nor am I saying that healers SHOULD never DPS. They say entire dungeons in that quote, it's clear they don't want healers to DPS the entire time, but that doesn't give us an exact number. I'm not taking it out of context at all. I'm trying to keep it WITHIN the context of the original quote, which is largely a case of "well, we don't like healer DPS that much, but we accept it's a part of the game right now, but changes have/may come in the future." That's all.

I don't want them to remove healer DPS entirely unless it somehow becomes that healers have to constantly heal. I don't like standing idle.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I haven't played WoW since Pandaria, but the times mentioned thus far (LK, Cataclysm) and BC (Best tier), every boss encounter was a bag of tricks used based on certain criteria. That criteria could be RNG based, party position based, etc. The mechanics are not that different from FF14, but the way they are chosen and the order they are used are what changes from encounter to encounter. The Raid Party in WoW must adjust to the mechanics that come out, not pre-plan around them (The Spreadsheet comment)

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Pandaria was my favorite expansion, and the expansion where I finally got into more challenging healing (I had always mained shadow). I feel that damage, in Mists and Warlords, was not very predictable. You had plenty of times where you could plan for a big burst of damage, of course, but there was almost always something to do. Challenge Modes in Mists were some of my favorite times playing the game, and they were incredibly punishing. I never wasn't healing, except maybe on bosses. In this game, the only time there's "unexpected" damage is if a DPS stands in something and I wasn't watching him.

Here's what's interesting about Holy priest, my main healer, during MoP/WoD (but especially Mists): It could do an enormous amount of damage, more than any healer, including discipline, the DPS healer, if specced properly. It was not uncommon for me to go into LFR and be in the top 3 DPS. When we were doing our CMs (I did several sets, including 2 entire sets as priest), I went for the highest DPS I could, because holy was the weakest healer, and it was considered to basically be nerfing yourself if you went in with a holy priest instead of discipline, but the DPS I could put out really helped make a difference. My second set I did as discipline, and our clear times were noticeably slower.

I would kill to see something that demanding in this game, where DPSing as a healer is a meaningful choice, not just a byproduct of having nothing to do.

Note: I'm on a shitload of painkillers right now, so sorry if anything I'm saying doesn't make sense percocet is amazing

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I haven't played WoW since Pandaria, but the times mentioned thus far (LK, Cataclysm) and BC (Best tier), every boss encounter was a bag of tricks used based on certain criteria. That criteria could be RNG based, party position based, etc. The mechanics are not that different from FF14, but the way they are chosen and the order they are used are what changes from encounter to encounter. The Raid Party in WoW must adjust to the mechanics that come out, not pre-plan around them (The Spreadsheet comment)

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40 man raiding wasn't for me so I quit from BWL until maybe halfway into LK but... could you give me some examples? Are you talking about stuff like... I dunno, those spores on Festergut or whatever in ICC? IIRC those were random but you still set collapse points in advance.

What was the healing check fight in ICC, that dragon you had to heal? Dreamwalker. I mean I guess they could plop us down an NPC to heal in FF (Savage/EX Aery?) to keep us busy but... I dunno, I liked healing in WoW but I just do not remember WoW's healing checks that fondly.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

It's not an all or nothing thing. I'm not saying the devs want healers to never DPS, nor am I saying that healers SHOULD never DPS. They say entire dungeons in that quote, it's clear they don't want healers to DPS the entire time, but that doesn't give us an exact number. I'm not taking it out of context at all. I'm trying to keep it WITHIN the context of the original quote, which is largely a case of "well, we don't like healer DPS that much, but we accept it's a part of the game right now, but changes have/may come in the future." That's all.

I don't want them to remove healer DPS entirely unless it somehow becomes that healers have to constantly heal. I don't like standing idle.

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Perhaps a better phrasing of it would be you want healer DPS to be more a reward/bonus for higher level players who are optimizing and/or outgearing content compared to something mandatory? Because that is more or less my stance. While I enjoy healing in this game, my absolute favourite times doing so is through new expansion dungeons with lower tier gear. Bardam's Mettle in full Shire hurts to heal. Even with a few upgrades, I had to work healing and DPSing through Doma. Unfortunately, those moments are few and far in between since the game centers its entire damage phases through predictable script mechanics. Honestly, the issue has long been the dev's refusal to make the game harder despite their insistence on closing the skill gap. I wish we had more options as healers or even some sort of combo system or ability to chain healing; something unique. With how easy many things have become in Stormblood though, I doubt that ever happens.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Perhaps a better phrasing of it would be you want healer DPS to be more a reward/bonus for higher level players who are optimizing and/or outgearing content compared to something mandatory?

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Yes, that's pretty much what I'm trying to get at. I have a hard time expressing what I mean sometimes. I just wish that healer DPS wasn't a thing solely because there's nothing to do.

Savage Raid level healing doesn't rely on healers fixing errors. It's all one shot, wipe based mechanics and a White Mage is going to have MP surplus that allows them to damage. They are usually the first to hit the floor anyway, if someone didn't follow protocol and a wipe is coming. I was actually doing Whm roulette daily when I came back because I can't stand that system. Then got Great Gubal 4 days in a row and stopped. The point being, the game needs both versions of White Mage because not everyone is doing end game exclusive.

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Originally Posted by gti443

I dunno, I liked healing in WoW but I just do not remember WoW's healing checks that fondly.

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Specific mechanics are a bit difficult for me to remember, and admittedly, as a Paladin when healing, I was generally on cleanse or Tank duty.

What I do remember is that 'healing' checks in WoW, BC Era, generally revolved around a specific mechanic that had to be handled / removed, or just the boss entering a 10-15 second frenzy and would just pummel the tank into the ground. Not much room to breath in most cases, but that's generally how I liked my encounters. A large stream of information to parse and deal with which just isn't possible with FF14's interface. Or Default WoW's for that matter. (GRID was the best)

The problem is that healing is way too powerful. This necessitates that damage output be absolutely bonkers to have any meaningful chance of killing anyone: see the chain-casting of heavy AOEs in OV1S. That damage is trivial to WHM; a reminder here that Charybidis EMPTIES YOUR HP BAR. You can have everyone back to full in the time it takes the boss to finish the next cast. Once you get the rhythm of a fight down -- they are all 100% scripted and predictable -- the only thing that can really kill people is their own failure. How can there ever be a challenge? If there's no challenge, you can either stop pushing your buttons or DPS.

They need to stop designing these encounters with WTFOMGINSANE damage bursts and make healing a fight against attrition rather than a fight to stay awake.

Edit incoming

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Just because healer DPS isn't considered when everyone has relevant gear and plays perfectly doesn't mean they don't expect you to. Healer =/= Pacifist

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Actually I'd like to counter this particular point. During the Media Tour Mr. Happy had the opportunity to interview Yoshi on this particular subject among others, wherein Yoshi P stated specifically that he wanted to reinforce to players that, "I firmly believe that [healer dps] shouldn't be mandatory and we DO NOT have the expectation for them to dps." It is absolutely not the intention of the devs to expect dps from healers in this game, and have only stated that dpsing as a healer should be left up to the healer in question in any given situation (such as their example where while in cutting edge progression if a team does not have the proper dps due to too low an ilvl, after party discussion a healer might help with dps).

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

What I do remember is that 'healing' checks in WoW, BC Era, generally revolved around a specific mechanic that had to be handled / removed, or just the boss entering a 10-15 second frenzy and would just pummel the tank into the ground.

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Hmm... you could heal through them to a point but those "frenzy" moves were intended more as tank gear checks; I'm talking about HPS races. If you couldn't pump out enough HPS to get through the debuff on Deathwing... sucked to be you; time for your raid team to get you more gear. On Dreamwalker you needed to spam heals on the NPC dragon and still heal the raid through a gauntlet while floating around the room collecting orbs occasionally. There was an HPS check pretty much every tier from what I remember.

Maybe WoW has found a way around HPS races but to me they're part and parcel of embracing the "pure healing" playstyle and I dunno how I feel about mechanics like that making their way into FF.

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Originally Posted by gti443

There was an HPS check pretty much every tier from what I remember.

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Jogging my memory. The Heal Check in Dreamwalker was largely performing the float/bubble mechanic, as no amount of gear let you bypass the huge healing buff you received from said mechanic. You may collect the orbs periodically, but if memory serves, it was possible to chain the duration so that it never fell off, and kept it stacking to stupid levels. (Which falls under the 'handling a specific mechanic' part.)

Though you are right. Karazhan had one, SSC, TK had them, BC and Sunwell. Brutallus was just a straight up check all around. (Tank, healer, and DPS check in one).

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Originally Posted by Jxnibbles

SE also wants us to spam Cure I, and Cure II for lillies but optimally we want to use as little as possible, and use Regen as much as possible.
Same goes with Scholar. I don't think anyone on the Dev team even plays a Healer.

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SE said they didn't want people to have to look at buff bars for class abilities anymore and designed an entire job gauge UI system for that.

SE also gave us Plenary Indulgence at the same time, which required looking at buff bars to know who it was going to hit.

Sometimes, what SE says and what they do may not line up that well. IMO, all that YoshiP's infamous comment means is that they don't intend to design things such that healers doing optimal DPS is mandatory. They're not anti-healer DPS.


I mean, if they really wanted to kill healer DPS, they could. Instead of removing Cleric Stance, they could have made it so that you can't remove it (like a Sect). Then you can choose if you want to DPS or heal in a given fight, and can't change your mind. Done.

Just with the way healing is right now, people go from full to low to full very quickly. You don't typically need to sustain chain healing. You rarely run out of MP. So there's no particular reason not to throw some DPS out except not wanting to.

Sometimes I think "pure healer" is taken out of context. People seem to think that this means a WHM does nothing but heal, and does not deal damage. When taken in this context it does indeed seem contradictory to what SE wants WHM to be. If that was the case though, we wouldn't have Holy, Assize, rocks to throw, and wind magic to cut down enemies.

Rather, I believe a pure healer is one who really doesn't have any fancy gimmicks to their restorative ability. No shields, no pet assistance, no cards, no dance steps, just raw heals. The high cost of Cure 2 is there for a reason, because it restores insane HP even without buffs; w/ buffs it usually heals more than what is necessary.

I really don't get why this upsets people. Do you want SE to take away WHMs damage capability? Or do you want to them to come out and admit that WHM isn't a pure healer? I get the whole lack of raid utility thing, but other than that WHM is pretty solid.

I think WHM should be able to hold its own DPS. For me I've always viewed WHM to be:
-A powerful raw & reactive healer with superior AoE healing ability.
-A healer that sustains HP with decent HoT's
-A healer with good burst damage and AoE damage. Holy used to be the best AoE in the game, not the highest potency, but high enough and spammable enough to make stuff melt.

Given WHM cannot increase the DPS of the party, it should have the highest personal DPS among the healers (whilst still healing), followed by SCH, followed by AST (because of the usefulness of cards).

I think SE are stumbling a bit with what they're doing with healers. Personally, I think SE should take a leaf out of XI's book, even if it is from XI's later life. Run a test server before updates, have select player candidates use the test server and provide feedback on these changes. I see that as being how to get around "well the dev team don't play these jobs".

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I think SE are stumbling a bit with what they're doing with healers. Personally, I think SE should take a leaf out of XI's book, even if it is from XI's later life. Run a test server before updates, have select player candidates use the test server and provide feedback on these changes. I see that as being how to get around "well the dev team don't play these jobs".

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Every game I have ever played that used this testing approach had 10x the number and severity of balance problems that FFXIV has ever had. The devs might bumble around a bit, but they are impartial at least; they want to make a good game. When you start throwing fanatical advocates for this and that Job into the mix, everything gets turned into a melodramatic zero-sum game. While, yes, players tend to have more practical knowledge of how things play, they can't see past the ends of their own noses and almost never act in good faith for the betterment of overall balance in the meta.

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Originally Posted by Trunks

they can't see past the ends of their own noses and almost never act in good faith for the betterment of overall balance in the meta.

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You have to look no further than the forums to realize this. The "balance" changes people want for x job are generally ridiculous and overtuned. They don't normally seem to look passed their tiny little box of their job during this specific situation.

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Originally Posted by Trunks

The devs might bumble around a bit, but they are impartial at least; they want to make a good game.

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I question both these statements... >w>

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Originally Posted by Trunks

The devs might bumble around a bit, but they are impartial at least; they want to make a good game.

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I do agree that they are impartial, but I also feel that they are lacking a little something when it comes to the healer classes. Imagination? Experience? Enthusiasm? Pretty much any of these and more stick quite well in my eyes unfortunately.

WHM is a pretty solid job and outside of it's lack of raid utility it's pretty hard to fault it. But then that's most likely because I was playing nigh enough the same class 18 years ago in Everquest. Give a Luclin era Shaman a few choice Paladin heals such as healing wave of prexus and you've effectively got today's FFXIV WHM. It works though and to be fair, most MMOs can get away with having one classical healer in the roster.....

AST is practically a carbon copy of WHM with a few tweaked values, a now over complex card system bolted ontop and ghetto 'SCH' functionality literally gaffer taped onto the side of the class. Uninventive, uninspired and it's forever going to be a nightmare to balance.

SCH was pretty unique at launch and whilst HW mostly worked on it's raw HPS throughput, Deploy did a good job of reinforcing it's identity and role within the game. SB's launch saw the job brutally kicked to the curb, 4.05 gave it a plaster and a little red ribbon and left it at that, now it's sat there looking a bit disorientated and unsure where it's going to go next.

Compare healer gameplay from FFXIV to the likes of Warhammer Online or even World of Warcraft and it's a very different kettle of fish. Both of these games had a wide variety of healing jobs with Warhammer's roster being particularly notable (A melee DPS healer that was both balanced and trememdously enjoyable to play, whodathoughtit). Whilst I suspect that Yoshida is rather hamstrung by SE's financial department, my sympathy only goes so far. I refuse to believe that he wouldn't be able to hire a couple of proven players out of the JP community to help spruce up and invigorate the class design team somewhat.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I question both these statements... >w>

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You must not know the history of FFXIV if you question that the devs might want to make a good game.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

Not sure where he got that exact quote from, but even the novice hall, the content meant to TEACH you your role tells you to aid in dpsing if there's nothing else going on.

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People misquote this a lot. The Master of Magicks says "When you've healed all there is to heal, there may be time to weave in some offensive magics.". I'm at work so I don't have the screenshot I've made of this and that's all I can remember of that part. But they go on next to say something about making sure you fulfill your healing role first. So it's all packaged as something optional, which is the way Yoshi-P has always addressed it.