The Healer Double Standard

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

SCH and AST are both healers, BLM and BRD are different roles.

Furthermore, no one picks up AST or WHM because they want to spam 2 DPS buttons, they pick them up cause you know...they wanna heal.

People play SCH when they like shields, AST when they like buffs, and WHM when they like the big heals.

SCH was only special because of the 30 levels where people had to play Arcanist, so I mean, if Thaumaturge is going to level up into Bard, then yeah, the way the Job is built should probably change to match the others.

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Actually, I chose SCH because it had a high skill ceiling, and I was able to optimise by learning to micromanage my fairly (manually giving out embraces and placing it well) and by getting the most out of the more complex dps rotation.

Also, I find the fact that melee dps, ranged dps, and magic dps are all treated as their own roles incredibly irksome. They all dps, even if they do it in different ways. Why isn't shield healer its own role? Why isn't magical tank? Why isn't non-magical healer? (Apparently we needed another physical ranged dps because we only had 2, but we're sitting on 0 physical ranged healers and that doesn't seem to be a problem.)

Tangential rant aside, classes should be different. I'm all for at least one healer class (preferably only one) having a very simple dps rotation so that those who want that can have that. But saying one job was already one way is a terrible excuse for homogenisation.

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

SCH and AST are both healers, BLM and BRD are different roles.

Furthermore, no one picks up AST or WHM because they want to spam 2 DPS buttons, they pick them up cause you know...they wanna heal.

People play SCH when they like shields, AST when they like buffs, and WHM when they like the big heals.

SCH was only special because of the 30 levels where people had to play Arcanist, so I mean, if Thaumaturge is going to level up into Bard, then yeah, the way the Job is built should probably change to match the others.

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i played sch for its many dps options and pet managing both are gone this expac
i played ast for the card system thats gone
I dont play healers for healing since xiv has very little healing to do and if i just wanted to heal id spend 90-99% of fights afk

The line where Yoshida thought WHM had to heal everything while scholar was dpsing pretty much shows how completely clueless he is about healers states.

I feel like arguing about healers and what's wrong is a waste of time until the day they finally eventually want to realize that things have drastically changed since ARR.

Besides... just one small note about that "please healers heal more, we'd like you to just heal".
Why leaving WHM with high personnal damage only as a rDPS contribution then ? It kinda contradicts the whole things then want healers to be pushed into.

I honestly feel like they just don't assume healer's DPS because they don't want pure healers to be upset since DPSing healers keep dpsing regardless of what Yoshida think healer should do.

So this is a bit hypocrite.

But whatever...

Sorry, but the ways healer contribute DPS have never struck me as an identity, so it’s quite honestly never influenced my choice. I contribute DPS as my healing kit allows, and which skills I use to do that are well...inconsequential to me. I’m sorry a wide variety of healers are upset with the DPS changes.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

The healer DPS mentality exists because of the way the game has been designed for the last 6 years.
Apply Dot, Spam filler 9 times, repeat until dead just isn't fun.

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DPS mentality exists because incoming DPS is insufficient to keep us busy. We fill downtime with DPS because mana allows it.
Agreed on the second point. While I do not want some hyper complex DPS rotation (that I wouldn't manage to keep up with anyway), a little more variety than massaging my Dia button while trying to not fall asleep would be most welcome.

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

Sorry, but the ways healer contribute DPS have never struck me as an identity, so it’s quite honestly never influenced my choice. I contribute DPS as my healing kit allows, and which skills I use to do that are well...inconsequential to me. I’m sorry a wide variety of healers are upset with the DPS changes.

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How classes interact with the content, regardless of whether it is healing or dealing damage, is absolutely identity defining.

Healer players want to be engaged with the content, and neither their healing toolkits nor their DPS toolkits are particularly engaging right now thanks to class and encounter design.

Outside of trash pulls, healing in this game is generally "press a button once and put it aside for like half a minute". Sometimes if you're lucky you might have to press it twice within that same time period. Or maybe press another button entirely! Ooh I get giddy just thinking about that second button press. So exciting. Thus why people turn towards their DPS tools. Because that is what we end up using more often than not.

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

Sorry, but the ways healer contribute DPS have never struck me as an identity, so it’s quite honestly never influenced my choice. I contribute DPS as my healing kit allows, and which skills I use to do that are well...inconsequential to me. I’m sorry a wide variety of healers are upset with the DPS changes.

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As healers get better at their role, they will invariably shift from time spent healing to time spent DPSing. This is simply due to the fact that incoming damage is constant, and a better healer is one able to keep up with damage faster and more efficiently, which leaves time for DPS. In a way, having time to DPS can be seen as a reward for healing well. Thus, it is upsetting when the thing that's our "reward" for doing well, the thing we'll do more and more as we get better, gets dumbed down and made more boring.

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Originally Posted by IttyBitty

Healer players want to be engaged with the content, and neither their healing toolkits nor their DPS toolkits are particularly engaging right now thanks to class and encounter design.

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They need to look at giving SCH and WHM some stuff to use in the downtime like AST. AST has the card system to play with. Since SCH is a Tactician, have us do a Mudra-ish system (that we can use GCDs between without messing up) that can create various Tactics that can debuff enemies. They could add Chain Strategem into there as a possible combination, add one for lowering magic damage, one for lowering physical damage, and one that gives back a percentage of health done to allies hit by the enemy's attacks within a certain time frame. Fun stuff that keeps us busy.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

They need to look at giving SCH and WHM some stuff to use in the downtime like AST. AST has the card system to play with. Since SCH is a Tactician, have us do a Mudra-ish system (that we can use GCDs between without messing up) that can create various Tactics that can debuff enemies. They could add Chain Strategem into there as a possible combination, add one for lowering magic damage, one for lowering physical damage, and one that gives back a percentage of health done to allies hit by the enemy's attacks within a certain time frame. Fun stuff that keeps us busy.

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If the fight is going well enough that you don’t need to heal defensive buffing will only exacerbate the problem by reducing the amount of healing you need to do going forward. It might be good busy work between big heals on fights that we’re still struggling with but it’s not a general fix.

Is a kit with more buttons and lower potencies better than a kit with higher damage and fewer buttons?

How many DPS options are required to make an entertaining kit?

Would people accept a kit that required more work, if it gave us generally the same DPS output as now?