Stop telling healers to go play dps

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

I never understood how healers enjoyed doing a 2 button rotation the vast majority of the time, because damage is way too low
i understand doing damage during downtime but when that downtime is so much that you're spamming stone or ruin for more than half the fight, that sounds like bad design to me and way more boring than having to use your, you know, heal abilities?

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Again, for the thousandth time, these changes do not at all indicate a 95% healing uptime in content going forward, we can see this from the media tour footage where it shows things just as they always have been. So 1. We have tons and tons of downtime, 2. We used to fill it with a slightly less than mildly complex dps rotation. 3. We have now had this rotation simplified even further with no changes in sight to fight structure... I wouldn't say I really even enjoyed the spamming Broil II part of my rotation, I like the DoT uptime and such, but they took that away from us...

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Because there was a HUGE disparity in DPS between SCH and the other two classes.

And since they are bringing healing more into focus with 5.0 and focusing less on DPS, it made more sense for them to bring the outlier (SCH) in line with the majority than to buff WHM and AST when they are trying to de-emphasize DPS.

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Turning SCH into a broil spam was not the answer, however.
As far as I'm concerned the only healer that lacked was WHM.

SCH brought damage to the table, and AST brought balance.
They also could have brought SCHs damage down without making it boring.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Remember Antittower or Lost City of Amdapor (Hard)? It's i180. You are doing it synced down to i270. That's a 90 item level difference. Of course you can go as a SCH and let the fairy handle big pulls.

Compare that with the leveling dungeon Bardam's Mettle where just 3 enemies can sink the tank's health while in tank stance. That could be why the L73 leveling dungeon was hurting a lot. Leveling dungeons are heavily synced close to the minimum item level.

We know nothing until we play it. Healing may not be any different once we outgear Shadowbringers' expert dungeons.

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Except for the fact that Yoshida outright said that healing will be much more necessary throughout 5.0, not just leveling dungeons. Their design philosophy of 5.0 is to increase taken damage overall so that tanks would have to be more active in their CD use and healers would have to heal more.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Compare that with the leveling dungeon Bardam's Mettle where just 3 enemies can sink the tank's health while in tank stance. That could be why the L73 leveling dungeon was hurting a lot. Leveling dungeons are heavily synced close to the minimum item level.

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Though if I remember correctly, the character's were level synced from 80 to run the dungeon and were still getting hit fairly hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h3d_xZR-QY

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Originally Posted by Tracewood

I know plenty of healers who HATED being forced to DPS, they're beside themselves with the changes (they aren't vocal about it on forums). Honestly I'm in the camp of that it's the DPS responsibility to DPS, and tanks to an extent. The current mentality encouraged people to roll a healer but only heal very rarely, and the ones that dps more than heal are very bad at it (letting people die because their fflogs are more important).

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I don't think that healers should feel forced to dps. Ideally they would never need to.

But unfortunately with the way the game is it just leaves a lot of time where if you don't heal, you're standing around doing nothing but waiting for a health bar to go down.

And you also have solo quests and duties where healers need to be able to dps and dot nuke nuke nuke dot is really boring.

And then you also have healers who enjoy contributing dps, weaving in as much as they can while still keeping the party alive.

I'm all for them say increasing outgoing damage so healers have less dead time standing around with nothing to heal, but I know I'll definitely miss bane/shadowflare/misama on my scholar because there was just rarely ever a need to spam heals without time for dps, and if I ONLY dpsed it would be boring.

When I heal, I don't dps because I'm obsessed with numbers or don't like healing, I dps because at least in casual content, there isn't enough healing needed to keep me occupied, and having dps a little more involved than just a dot, a nuke and an aoe helps to keep my brain running when the healing part is super easy. Maybe if they do increase damage output this won't be an issue in ShB but I'm a bit skeptical they'll pivot things super far in that direction. We'll see for sure in 5.0.

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Originally Posted by Awha

Problem is using a gcd on a heal outside downtime is a fairly uncommon. Healing like aggro is a group effort and that is the issue. If healing remains a group effort those at higher levels of play will have very few active skills to use, if they up the incoming damage to forcibly increase the amount of gcds one uses on healing then they run the risk alienating their playerbase. It will be a balancing act and I personally do not think SE is capable of such an act.

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Specifically the bolded part, Dungeons are the perfect way around this. By incrementally increasing the healing requirements per dungeon you incrementally boost their ability to heal going forward.
It'd be hard to get the scales to balance properly, but if they did it correctly the result would be more Healers at level cap better able to deal with higher frequencies of damage.

Ironically, I think its the 'vets' that would struggle more with increased healing requirements. Evidenced by a video I saw from the media tour of an AST in the dungeon. Incoming damage was fairly consistent on the Tank, yet the Paladin was frequently dipping to 20%~ and even died on a small trash pull at one point.
So I rewatched it and paid attention to the cast bar and sure enough, The Tank was sub 50% hp with 7 mobs beating his face in and the Healer is happily spamming Gravity with no concern for the Tank that was about to kick the bucket.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

And you also have solo quests and duties where healers need to be able to dps and dot nuke nuke nuke dot is really boring.

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The irony is that Healers have been doing this since 2.0. People like to dress up SCH dps like its something special, but the reality is that it was DoT+DoT+Ruin spam from launch. Whee, such complexity. Dropping AoWs between Heals will add some interactivity on trash packs, IMO.
WHM was the same. When AST came out, it was also the same. Especially back when they could all use Aero.

Even right now on live, a WHM gets its first damage skills at 1 and 4 and doesn't get A3 till 58. That's 58 levels of 1 DoT and 1 Nuke. No different to what ShB is giving us.
SCH isn't much better, getting its 2 DoTs and nuke by level 10 and then simply never getting another rotational damage skill. ED is damage yes, But due to Aetherflow, its basically a short cooldown oGCD not much different to Assize.

SCH losing its second DoT was a bit surprising, but ultimately won't make a difference in how the SCH plays. You just use Broil where you would have used that Miasma. Healer dps has never been interesting. Not in ARR, HW or SB. Its literally going to be more of the same in ShB.
I was genuinely surprised to see WHM get a new damage spell. Though Misery seems to their answer to CS and Cards.

I like to dps as a healer when i have downtime, but i never cared for the more depth filled healer rotations. It's not my focus as a healer to be micromanaging the uptime of dots, which is why i'm glad that they've trimmed them down over the years. Remember when we had to separately apply bio and bio 2 with miasma to deal damage? I hated that.

Am i gonna miss bane and shadowflare and energy drain? Yeah a little, but i'm not that beat up over it.

Also, this is off topic, but the thread title has the exact same energy as when a bunch of Huff-Po journalists got canned and everyone was just telling them "learn to code"

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Originally Posted by Seniade

What? Calm down Chicken Little, the sky is not falling.

All 3 healers still have access to Lucid
WHM: has Thin Air (0MP cost for 12s on a 120s cooldown)
SCH: Aetherflow & summon has been reduced (at least in the media tour build) to only costing 200MP
AST: ED now uses the charge system and can hold 2 charges, Aspected Benefic was reduced to 500MP

Plus the skills each healer has to heal at 0MP cost, if the healer's death causes a wipe, the party was already about to wipe anyway.

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Yes but sch lost energy drain and Astro lost ewer and sch still has higher cost skills.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

Yes but sch lost energy drain and Astro lost ewer and sch still has higher cost skills.

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There is a solid chance that MP values have yet be adjusted to reflect the lack of these abilities.

Also we're not totally sure yet how impactful the new and improved piety will be. Since it will now be increasing passive MP gain instead of increasing the size of the MP pool.

So sch and astro stack piety while whm can get good stats due to thin air plus lucid being op in new content? Not to be a jerk honestly just saying that's how it sounds.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

So sch and astro stack piety while whm can get good stats due to thin air plus lucid being op in new content? Not to be a jerk honestly just saying that's how it sounds.

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Consider the following.

WHM has excessive MP regens that are only useful in extreme emergency situations like during progression like it is now.

I just chuckled at the idea that WHM would be chosen over AST and SCH for farm because of their good MP regen.

Yeah and astro and sch used to have them too is the point I'm making.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

Yes but sch lost energy drain and Astro lost ewer and sch still has higher cost skills.

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Ewer was reliant on RNG, so while nice, could not be relied on in case of a healer death.
For SCH, Aetherflow not only recovers MP, but also the stacks allow for 0MP cost healing skills (plus Sacred Soil is getting a trait to add a 100 potency per tick regen on top of the dmg reduction & 20% chance to proc a free succor). They also added a skill to spend 10 fey gauge for an AOE heal (again 0MP cost).

Like I said, if the healer's death causes a wipe, the party was already doomed.

I think SE didnt intend for healers DPS to be considered into raid dmg, but, i do think they intended healers to throw out damage occasionally (by design of the job, not encounter) just for "fun".
(To clarify, I know, and agree with, that yoshida said they dont take healer DPS into consideration for raids)

The reason healers DPS so often, is due to bosses auto attacks doing so little in damage.
But the irony, is that the reason bosses auto attacks do so little in damage, is due to healers healing so little on a basic GCD heal.
If a boss bring a tank to low HP, the healer either has to use emergency oGCDs, or spams cure/cure2 until they are full hp. Which if the bosses auto attacks were still like cleaves in damage, means our current healers wouldnt be capable of keeping up with the damage. they woudl run out of oGCD/emergency options.
So what is the answer? Stronger heals? Then there is almost no difference between a normal auto and a tank buster, since both bring tanks to really low HP. And are treated nearly the same.
It would get the WoW treatment, where HP ping pongs from low hp to full hp, back and forth. Healers get more emergency heals, and tanks get more mitigation to upkeep.
which seems to be the opposite of what SE wants to do.
The ONLY reason I can think of, is that SE does want both tanks, and more so healers, to throw out occasional DPS. Healers can ONLY throw out GCD DPS, if a tanks HP isnt ping ponging around.
The only way to do that, is to lower auto attack dmg of bosses, and lower healing potencies of healers.
OR to give healers a ton of strong/useful oGCD DPS to weave inbetween.
which, lets be honest, is perfectly fine, and not broken. I think SE thinks this would be broken, and make healers near DPS levels of damage, but if they cant afford to spend GCDs on nukes, you just cut their DPS in half (or more) and in solo content, healers can output DPS on levels of a tank in DPS stance, making them far more enjoyable in solo content.

But anyways, this is why I feel SE did think healers WOULD throw out damage spells, but at the same time, why they dont calculate it into the amount of DPS needed to win a fight.

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Originally Posted by Seniade

Ewer was reliant on RNG, so while nice, could not be relied on in case of a healer death.
For SCH, Aetherflow not only recovers MP, but also the stacks allow for 0MP cost healing skills (plus Sacred Soil is getting a trait to add a 100 potency per tick regen on top of the dmg reduction & 20% chance to proc a free succor). They also added a skill to spend 10 fey gauge for an AOE heal (again 0MP cost).

Like I said, if the healer's death causes a wipe, the party was already doomed.

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Assuming that a healer going down and not recovering immediately due to higher dmg kills us.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

Yeah and astro and sch used to have them too is the point I'm making.

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And my point is that WHM has always been better at it, but that never got them picked over AST and SCH because WHM lacks utility. They will be fine without their extra MP tools, and if they're not, they'll be adjusted.

Once people are farming content, less healing is needed, and you bring the healers that bring the utility.

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Originally Posted by disturbedcobra

Though if I remember correctly, the character's were level synced from 80 to run the dungeon and were still getting hit fairly hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h3d_xZR-QY

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Level sync, in theory, affects only one thing: what actions you have access to.

Level syncing also does an item level sync, which syncs to a pre-determined item level associated with that level. For L74 that is probably i403.

Even synced down in Stormblood leveling dungeons, enemies hit me pretty hard, so why wouldn't they in Shadowbringers leveling dungeons too?

They may be attempting to make healers have to heal more, but we shouldn't get our hopes up until we've actually seen it.

Anyway this whole post wasn't supposed to evolve into healer discussion oops. It was more about letting tanks and dps know that they should be a little more comforting about all the healer changes because obviously we are lost about the whole thing.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Remember Antittower or Lost City of Amdapor (Hard)? It's i180. You are doing it synced down to i270. That's a 90 item level difference. Of course you can go as a SCH and let the fairy handle big pulls.

Compare that with the leveling dungeon Bardam's Mettle where just 3 enemies can sink the tank's health while in tank stance. That could be why the L73 leveling dungeon was hurting a lot. Leveling dungeons are heavily synced close to the minimum item level.

We know nothing until we play it. Healing may not be any different once we outgear Shadowbringers' expert dungeons.

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This is what I was thinking, as well. Only time will tell if a "damage spike" actually occurs. I honestly don't think SE would increase it that much, especially in dungeons, because those are supposed to be fairly casual... But maybe they'll surprise us.

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Originally Posted by Mavrias

everyone saying that "theyre uping incoming damage to compensate" are forgetting that square designs most content for the lowest common denominator. yknow those healers that let the party die to the heal check in ultima the high seraph? yeah, encounters have to be designed so that even they can clear it with minimal issue. so the healers that regularly do higher end content are rightfully concerned that taking away their options to dps will leave them with very little because they will still have downtime.

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This is why I'm hesitant to expect any kind of significant change.

It's not only "current mentality", the game design itself favoured that kind of behaviour, considering how unfrequent damage was dealt to party/raid. The only way for a healer to feel he/she contributed during downtime was to Dps, or in AST case throw buffs around.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

Anyway this whole post wasn't supposed to evolve into healer discussion oops. It was more about letting tanks and dps know that they should be a little more comforting about all the healer changes because obviously we are lost about the whole thing.

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I can agree that tanks and dps should be a bit more supportive and not as combative towards the healers, but there are some in the healer community who have gone way too far off the deep end for a developmental build. We know this and we know up until the x.2 patch things can drastically change for jobs in this game. As evident with the war 4.2 overhaul.

So by all means healers provide the feedback you need to, criticize what you must, voice your confusion and opposition to these changes, but could we spare the salt driven rampages we have seen from a select few in the community and just act like the adults many of us are?

I sincerely hope either content is made more engaging for healers or something is added to make your downtime somewhat more enjoyable and even if it doesn’t right away keep at it. I have been a machinist for a long time and i kept giving feedback on the changes i didnt like in stormblood and now we got a rework. Hydaelyn willing you wont have to wait the same two years we did..

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

It's not only "current mentality", the game design itself favoured that kind of behaviour, considering how unfrequent damage was dealt to party/raid. The only way for a healer to feel he/she contributed during downtime was to Dps, or in AST case throw buffs around.

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This is the problem with the current design of dungeons/bosses. Healers only really need to throw out cooldowns as it is.
Even if the damage in ShB dungeons is increased, healers are still going to be expected to DPS because they will still have downtime.

As it stands the game only requires healing in chunks, and the rest is downtime when the healer can do whatever they want. If the game was constantly throwing out damage, then that would be a different situation.

everyone saying that "theyre uping incoming damage to compensate" are forgetting that square designs most content for the lowest common denominator. yknow those healers that let the party die to the heal check in ultima the high seraph? yeah, encounters have to be designed so that even they can clear it with minimal issue. so the healers that regularly do higher end content are rightfully concerned that taking away their options to dps will leave them with very little because they will still have downtime.

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Originally Posted by Mavrias

everyone saying that "theyre uping incoming damage to compensate" are forgetting that square designs most content for the lowest common denominator. yknow those healers that let the party die to the heal check in ultima the high seraph? yeah, encounters have to be designed so that even they can clear it with minimal issue. so the healers that regularly do higher end content are rightfully concerned that taking away their options to dps will leave them with very little because they will still have downtime.

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This is exactly why I'm worried.

Whats next, removal of enrage?

......oh boy

I like the new WHM changes, and can't wait! I'm sticking with WHM as my main as I love how I can do some awesome save-by-the-pants heals for a group!

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Originally Posted by Hash_Browns

I don't think people are upset because they wanted to be green DPS for queue times, I believe people are upset because they are simplifying the classes on extreme level.

Healers already don't have rotations, and changing a SCH rotation to basically what is Broil -> Broil -> Broil -> Broil is boring as all hell.

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I think this is funny .. because as a WHM, most of my DPS is Stone -> Stone ~> Stone ... /shrugs

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

I think this is funny .. because as a WHM, most of my DPS is Stone -> Stone ~> Stone ... /shrugs

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This is exactly why I stopped playing WHM.

With SCH you have a rotation, DoTs to keep up, etc.
With AST you have buffs to pass around.
With WHM you spam stone, or holy. It's boring.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

I think this is funny .. because as a WHM, most of my DPS is Stone -> Stone ~> Stone ... /shrugs

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AST is pretty much the same and has been since the beginning, the only job who's dps is getting gutted is SCH.

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Originally Posted by Hash_Browns

If the game was constantly throwing out damage, then that would be a different situation.

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The problem there is ff14's slow gcd, animation delay and server delay making it hard to react to fast unpredictable waves of high damage. In a game like WoW, instant heals are actually split-second instant, the gcd is barely 1 sec and tanks, even dps have stronger self-sustain, so things can hit harder. Even then, you're stuck twiddling your thumbs as a healer as soon as you outgear content. Another issue would be that your group would just crumple the moment a healer died making it extremely high-responsibility.

I can't see them throwing out constant damage to the point healer dps is no longer required. They would also have to change the entire enrage-timer focus of encounters, otherwise if a healer is capable of any dps, it will be expected of them. It's very likely healing will feel very similar to now, just slightly easier to dps.

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Originally Posted by MaraD_

I think SE didnt intend for healers DPS to be considered into raid dmg, but, i do think they intended healers to throw out damage occasionally (by design of the job, not encounter) just for "fun".
(To clarify, I know, and agree with, that yoshida said they dont take healer DPS into consideration for raids)

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I disagree with this.

For example Seiryu EX has roughly a 32k raid dps requirement. Let's say healers require 0 dps and the average tank is 3.5k (being generous, since Yoshi has said tanks should be able to tank in tank stance, which would result in less than that). That would mean each dps requires 6.25k just to scrape enrage. It might not sound like a massive number to a savage raider, but you're talking the top 1-25% of players depending on class, no deaths, just to scrape it last second. There's no way that's the intentional difficulty. It's semi-casual mount farm content.

I believe Yoshi simply isn't in touch with his battle design team. He doesn't think healers should have to dps. But his design team do and have created the encounters to account for that.

As a healer I'm kinda neutral on the whole thing. On one hand it might separate those who do enjoy playing healers to those who just came in as one for faster que's. On the other hand adding in dps during down time was fun cos like. Standing around with a full MP bar and everyone was at full health just waiting for someone to take damage really wasn't fun. As long as I have at least SOMETHING extra to add in during those downtime moments, I'm okay with the changes as per the group side of things.

I think my only real concern is how much of a chore is it going to be to get through the majority of the solo bits in the MSQ going through it as a healer.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

Specifically the bolded part, Dungeons are the perfect way around this. By incrementally increasing the healing requirements per dungeon you incrementally boost their ability to heal going forward.
It'd be hard to get the scales to balance properly, but if they did it correctly the result would be more Healers at level cap better able to deal with higher frequencies of damage.

Ironically, I think its the 'vets' that would struggle more with increased healing requirements. Evidenced by a video I saw from the media tour of an AST in the dungeon. Incoming damage was fairly consistent on the Tank, yet the Paladin was frequently dipping to 20%~ and even died on a small trash pull at one point.
So I rewatched it and paid attention to the cast bar and sure enough, The Tank was sub 50% hp with 7 mobs beating his face in and the Healer is happily spamming Gravity with no concern for the Tank that was about to kick the bucket.

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Sure it is possible it to increase the amount of healing needed across the board, but as I said I simply do not have faith in SE to do so and at best they will up the damage enough to throw people for a loop for a little, but I do not see it being a lasting change with the standard formula SE has shown. IF SE does keep things the way they are then I honestly do think that people that enjoy healing in their current state then I do not think healers will be less common to a degree. Not because the healing output of the healers is gimped, but FFXIV style of healing differs so greatly from other games to a degree the style of play that we have had over the years caters to a more aggressive play style, if that changes then yeah they will alienate existing healers. The question is how many. Personally I wish SE went more into the aggressive healer aspect, but clearly they have a different vision. That is fine, just means that healers will not be for me coming 6.0.

I wish they upped their dps tool kit, finding a balance between the two aspects has always been fun.

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Originally Posted by Hash_Browns

This is the problem with the current design of dungeons/bosses. Healers only really need to throw out cooldowns as it is.
Even if the damage in ShB dungeons is increased, healers are still going to be expected to DPS because they will still have downtime.

As it stands the game only requires healing in chunks, and the rest is downtime when the healer can do whatever they want. If the game was constantly throwing out damage, then that would be a different situation.

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The idea is to reduce downtime, not eliminate it. I can't think of any healers who want to be healing for the entirety of the encounter, but I can think of several who don't want to be DPSing for 90% of it. We can talk about how healer DPS has been simplified, but the actual truth is this has only happened to SCH. They are the only ones who will be losing any kind of identity come 5.0. But what about the identity of the healer role itself?

For too long now all three healers have been a green DPS. When you literally do not use any GCDs whatsoever to accomplish the primary objective of your role, there's a problem. Healers are the only one with this problem. Healers in FFXIV are not healing jobs with offensive capability; they are DPS jobs with healing capability. If you want to be on board with the direction these devs want to go with healers, I'd strongly suggest to start planning on abandoning the concepts of the latter.

This doesn't mean that healers should not be casting offensive spells during their downtime, but the 90% DPS uptime is going away whether you like it or not.

The healers that think they won't have to dps in shadowbringers are the epitome of naive.

I'm not personally invested heavily on whether healers become pure healing only or provide a trickle of dps, as long as there's no gaps that feel like you're left useless. That's the only thing I'm iffy about and it's just more "wait and see". It doesn't look wholly promising, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they might've changed encounters to compensate for the changes.

I haven't healed in XIV so I can't say for sure, but healers need *something* to reward them for actually healing well and getting new gear, and right now dps fills that role. If all you can do is heal, then when you start gearing up in savage after clearing the tier, what's the extra gear really get you? The ability to push less buttons and use more /dance emotes during the fight? With healer dps being worth something, more healing potency from gear means less time spent healing and more time spent dpsing, which is an overall benefit to the fight as you all kill it quicker.

I know that back in the day in WoW (dunno how it is recently) I played a healer and I'd just sit there spamming smite sometimes because I outgeared a fight and wanted to feel like I was doing something, even if healer dps was total trash.

Not to mention, having healers dps half the time means that healers who are worse can still compete in higher level content, because they can spend some of that dps time for healing instead. If you removed dps, you'd either have tons of downtime that'd make things a lot simpler/more boring, or you'd have damage cranked up higher in ways that'd just make it more difficult for the more casual crowd.

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Originally Posted by Hash_Browns

Generally speaking, a healer should only have to heal a few times during a fight. Besides the tank taking auto-attack damage, tankbusters, and unavoidable AOE damage, people should.. I dunno.. not take mechanics to the face, and then blame the healer because they died.

Healers have a ton of downtime in this game, and it isn't asking much of them for them to contribute to the fight.

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Healers should only have to heal a few times during a fight? Says who?

The reason you have this view if due to how FF14 fights are designed. Every fight is so scripted that once you remember the dance then healing turns into a minimal thing. This is a flaw in boss fight design. There is almost zero randomness.

I'm in the boat with the "healers should be healing and dps should be doing the dps". As a healer I shouldn't have to meld my gear to max out my DPS. This is poor design if you ask me. Even tanks meld to max out their damage.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The idea is to reduce downtime, not eliminate it. I can't think of any healers who want to be healing for the entirety of the encounter, but I can think of several who don't want to be DPSing for 90% of it. We can talk about how healer DPS has been simplified, but the actual truth is this has only happened to SCH. They are the only ones who will be losing any kind of identity come 5.0. But what about the identity of the healer role itself?

For too long now all three healers have been a green DPS. When you literally do not use any GCDs whatsoever to accomplish the primary objective of your role, there's a problem. Healers are the only one with this problem. Healers in FFXIV are not healing jobs with offensive capability; they are DPS jobs with healing capability. If you want to be on board with the direction these devs want to go with healers, I'd strongly suggest to start planning on abandoning the concepts of the latter.

This doesn't mean that healers should not be casting offensive spells during their downtime, but the 90% DPS uptime is going away whether you like it or not.

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Think the general fear people have is SE is not going to make it so healing is that demanding and thus putting healers in the situation they are in now with far simpler dps tool kits. A happy medium is if they increased the amount of healing required while also expanding heir own damage potential.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

The healers that think they won't have to dps in shadowbringers are the epitome of naive.

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I'd settle for doing less of it. Right now healers are doing about 90-95% dps and about 5-10% healing.. That's dumb. Play a dps.

If we could change that to even 50/50 or 60/40 healing to dps I'd feel a lot better about the role as a whole.

If you're a healer, your primary responsibility should be healing. If that isn't your primary responsibility, then that's a design failure.

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Originally Posted by Krojack

Healers should only have to heal a few times during a fight? Says who?

The reason you have this view if due to how FF14 fights are designed. Every fight is so scripted that once you remember the dance then healing turns into a minimal thing. This is a flaw in boss fight design. There is almost zero randomness.

I'm in the boat with the "healers should be healing and dps should be doing the dps". As a healer I shouldn't have to meld my gear to max out my DPS. This is poor design if you ask me. Even tanks meld to max out their damage.

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So bringing up scripted fights is interesting. I'd like to talk about WoW for a moment here without having the Sword of Damocles fall on my head if I could. The reason I want to talk about WoW is because it's the only other MMO that really has comparable or better raiding when put next to FFXIV.

I spent two expansions as a raid healer and one as a healer officer in that game and I'd like to talk about some differences in encounter design when it comes to healing. Bearing in mind I'm also talking about 25-man raids here so raids will have 5 or 6 healers in them.

Most fights in WoW are scripted. Most things are controlled by some combination of timers and boss health, so generally you know what's going to happen before it happens. Very few encounter mechanics in WoW were truly random, and even those could only manifest themselves in certain ways so eventually you'd know exactly what to do even when the random things did happen.

At no point was it necessary for my healers to dps. We didn't have the time. If at some point we DID have the time, we regenerated our mana pools and got ready for the next time we were going to be healing. Most of the time we'd be healing our asses off to repair unavoidable damage whether on the tanks or on the raid itself.

When people here talk about all this downtime where there's no healing to be done, I'm forced to ask "why?" Why isn't there healing to be done? It's not like it's difficult to design encounters that give healers something to do. WoW and other games have been doing it for decades. So why doesn't FFXIV give their healers something to do?

Like I said, it's a failure of encounter design if healers are finding themselves with THIS MUCH downtime that they can safely just burn mp on dealing damage, and I'd be perfectly happy to see an end to that. A healer should be making health bars go up, not down.

Healers heal, Tanks Tank, DPS cry about queue times. These are are the natural order of things. It seems like SE is just trying to get back to that.