Healer dps is unfairly boring

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Envoyé par AncientCrystal

Garbage argument, your job is to heal primarily, not dps. DPS doesn't HAVE to be complex.

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My "primary job" can be handled almost entirely via oGCD healing a majority of the time. So the very least they could do is make my "secondary" job (which fills up the majority of my GCD usage) a bit more engaging.

Let me tell you a story of how a healer was once (re-)designed in a certain MMO. It was a melee class with it's damaging abilities intimately tied to it's healing output despite only having 3 DPS buttons and a couple of basic healing spells.

First, it had a long-lasting but weak regen spell that would automatically hop to a wounded party member if it's current target was at full health. The spell had a cooldown, so you could only ever have a limited number of players regenning at a time, but it was nice. Weak, but a nice side bonus - kind of like fairy passive healing. The real key was the regen buff's interplay with other abilities.

The DPS kit was based around three melee "spells": a punch, a roundhouse kick, and... let's call it a drop-kick. The punch did light damage and added a stacking buff, with a cap of 3 copies, that did nothing inherently. The roundhouse kick did decent damage and consumed the aforementioned punch buff to copy itself while restoring mana for each hit landed. The drop-kick was mana-expensive and had a cooldown, but also burst-healed every single player with your regen buff on them.

There was one other, crucial, sublime element: taking a drink. The class had an ability - oGCD, in XIV terms - to take a drink that would buff the next major ability you used. It's important to note that the cooldown (~30 seconds IIRC) was less than the length of the class' regen buff (~45 seconds IIRC). Now, if used before your regen, you could place more copies on more players. If used before your drop-kick, it copied the drop-kick (including the heal).

The play pattern should now be obvious. There were other spells and abilities, including other possible drink buffs, but the core pattern of this build was to deal as much damage as possible while passively maintaining mana and putting out sustained healing. If a damage spike was approaching, you would drink up and buff your regen ~30 seconds in advance and then drink to buff your drop-kick as the damage spike landed. If you didn't drink to the right abilities, or messed up your DPS rotation too poorly, you would use too many inefficient strikes and wind up ineffective - either by putting out too little healing or burning your mana too quickly. It required more forethought than any healer in XIV.

Sadly, it turned out that there was only one bossfight where this build was mathematically strong, at least for my guild. The right and proper way to build and play the class was much less engaging. If this dps-focused healing build had been tuned to be stronger, and therefore something I got to play regularly... well, I probably wouldn't be here. I'd still be fistweaving. Unfortunately, I have learned that XIV healers are even shallower than the boring mistweaver builds that I fled. I'll probably continue playing for a bit, using Bard and/or Black Mage, but I expect to be gone before the next expansion. I am, after all, in no way interested in slamming a single button for the vast majority of my game time.

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Envoyé par Gemina

To make this short: As a healer main, I want to have fun healing; not DPSing. I will always be in favor of the devs focusing on the former, which is what I know they are trying to do and trying to get right.

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I'm with you on the last part, my everliving and dying wish is for SE to communicate, talk to us, set up testrealms, have a community manager or developer on here sharing their thoughts and ideas, show they take feedback and let us know why these jobs had to go through the wringer instead of just taking an atom bomb to them every expansion, taking off the googles, write down "mixed results" and wait two sodding years in complete silence before dropping another bomb just to see how that turns out. Because this act of asking for more, or the return of, non-boring way to deal damage is not to take precedence over healing, but live side by side, heck, even work together like turning Cards into damage or being able to dump Fey Gauge in an attack or aoe that heals or hurts depending on who it hits.

Talk of DPS options and capabilities was just the topic in this thread, that's not to say I don't miss having the extra dimension of healing that the seperate hotbar and manual Embrace brought and why that is just as important as to bring back the whole Arcanist to Scholar. Being able to direct a slightly weaker Physick at targets even when casting or waiting on gcds was so much fun because I could do it even when healing, mitigating, applying buffs/debuffs, reapplying dots or just dealing damage.

I enjoy trying to perform supportive roles in stressful situations so if for 5.2 they remade every dungeon and overworld mob to be akin to floor 191+, high level Eureka enemies, heal-er checks like having to use more Ressurections as part of a fight than there are swiftcasts and randomling patroling red chocobos in La Noscea spamming meteor then things would be different. But history has shown since ARR they have come up with one philosophy and have shown no interest in doing anything radical and stick with spread out world mobs, auto-attacks tickle, sidestep aoes, aoes hurt but are rarely lethal, drag packs to gate engage boss in circular room. All the opposite of this exists in Eureka and Deep Dungeons, but in very closed-off areas that serve only one purpose. Where are the mining spots, or fishing hangouts, in Eureka where you need to form bodyguard groups to reach them. But I'm diverging.

It's like a cookie cutter they apply over whatever exciting new ideas the designers come up with. They could've expanded on the pet hotbars, making Seraph an actual choice between Eos and Selene and not a copy paste Bahamut-egi with no buildup you press every two minutes, let us utilize the resources of Aetherflows and fancy job gauge they spent more time designing the look of than it's applications for both offense and healing. I'm with you just the act of performing the role could need some energy drinks, but the process of dealing damage is in dire need to resuscitation with jump pads and adrenaline shots to the thigh.

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Envoyé par Gemina

Do you honestly think getting another skill or two to spam is going satiate your need for offense? Do you think another skill or two is going to resolve what is actually going on with healers right now?

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Not one or two, and definitly not some to just spam like Ruin, Ruin 2 or AoW. Damage-over-times, damage fields and resource dumps, and several of them!

I don't know of the Mr. Happy video, but I have a hard time accepting that this is the best they can come up with or think is best for the jobs. Reason for that being Scholar existed before 5.0, and 4.0. At that one point in time it had more offensive and support capabilities than they had restorative ones and it worked very well. Take a look at SCH in HW. Restorative or those that help restore skills count eight. For supportive there were seventeen. Then the offensive ones or helped you deal damage elleven. We had more ways to prevent damage and more ways to deal damage than we had ways to restore health. Not only in concept but in execution did this lead a such a fun playstyle where I could help damage with dots which meant put 'em up and then focus on support, there were the manual embrace when it healed closer to Physicks number and was more busy looking for ways to let the party take less damage because I had an easier time doing that than restoring it.

Something to apply, put down or use quickly, definitly not something to spam. Because in that vein, spamming Ruin for one target, Ruin 2 one target while moving or AoW in groups is more detrimental to our healing because in order to feel like Im helping I need to put every GCD to it when I could've just put up the dots and don't worry about them until they started dropping of.

So way back we had BOTH more interesting ways to play the healer and an simple but engaging way to deal damage that worked both in and outside of parties. Seeing as the game and the fights haven't changed one bit but they've only taken stuff away from all these jobs makes it hard to accept they are doing this for out best.

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Envoyé par Aurturia

Well to be fair that's kinda subjective. I used to main sch and I loved stacking my dots and then exploding them with bane, it felt powerful, impactful. I'm sure AoW spam has the numbers but it just feels bad.
Ast on the other hand always had very similar dps tools to whm but then they juggled an interesting but not overwhelming card system, highs and lows made it a fun system to play with. Now the cards feel unimportant something to be tossed about with total disregard for who gets what, the system just feels like busy work, something I'm obligated to do but I dont see a real impact.
And then whm was the only of the three I just didn't like in stormblood it but now everything feels like whm and I'm a red mage now

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I've been playing SCH since I received my soulstone 4 years ago. Miasma+Bio+Bane on trash was the closest any healer has had to having a true DPS rotation. Unfortunately, bane became underutilized against bosses, and SCH never got any kind of a Fester. Then there was also the issue of ilv bloat and varied pulls from tanks which resulted in trash mobs melting so fast that the wombo combo of DoTs SCH can dish out wasn't needed, and SCH didn't have a spammable AoE. While your example is a good one, it still exemplifies the ongoing issues with healers and their skills becoming underutilized. In this case it is on the offensive, and the homogenization of DPS skills actually resolved this problem. Yes, I know AoW isn't very satisfying to use.

I won't go into AST cards. That doesn't have much bearing on the topic I am addressing.

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Envoyé par AncientCrystal

Garbage argument, your job is to heal primarily, not dps. DPS doesn't HAVE to be complex.

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Considering I don’t have to heal all that much to keep everyone alive (when everyone isn’t dropping like flies from eating mechanics) the only other option is too DPS so you’re point is incorrect. When I spend 75% DPSing I’d loved to do more than just 211111111111111121111111111111111111211111111121111-etc.

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Envoyé par Mavrias

it was much more interesting in HW and ARR, with cleric stance and multiple dots and timers to watch. But then those were removed to "encourage" more to play healer with uh, mixed results.

Also, you are wrong on a fundamental level about savage being more scripted than anything else. The only difference is the difficulty of the fights and the intensity of heal and dps checks. People screwing up in copied factory is no more "non-scripted" than people screwing up in e4s.

"Add a little more dots or cd variants for haste/ mp/ etc." Oh, you mean the stuff they took away?

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Your arguments are starting to sound more like pissed off little rants than anything else. They didn't remove cleric stance to encourage more players to play the role, it was done because it was a clunky, stupid design that was death sentence for a tank. That along with this "more interesting" DPS skillset for (just SCH mind you) lead to too many healers tunnel visioning on damage, and/or panic healing with CS still up. If you think getting rid of CS actually worsened the state of healers, you couldn't be more wrong.

You're also missing my point. People screwing up in CF is WAY different than screwing up in savage/ultimate. If just you and the tank is up in Savage, what is the probability of still getting a clear without the encounter resetting? As a matter of fact, during your time doing savage, how often would you say encounters fail, or you don't get a clear at all and have to try again later? When was the last time you didn't clear Copied Factory, or any normal mode raid/trial? Starting to see the difference? My point is that it is ok to use GCDs on heals in this content because players are screwing up all the time so it is necessary. In savage, if you're having to use GCDs on heals, something's not right, and the probability of the clear goes down.

I should also correct myself. While I haven't done any relevant savage, I've definitely done them unsynced. Even here if you screw up it's a reset. So I don't know what you're talking about. Copied Factory having any sort of similar script to a savage encounter is as accurate as a broken clock. What the bosses do is scripted, sure. But you just never know who is going to get hit by what, and you may have to go well out of script and support the other alliances.

"Oh, you mean the stuff they took away?"

Sure. If you say so.

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Envoyé par Gemina

I've been playing SCH since I received my soulstone 4 years ago. Miasma+Bio+Bane on trash was the closest any healer has had to having a true DPS rotation. Unfortunately, bane became underutilized against bosses, and SCH never got any kind of a Fester.

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But SCH also had Shadow Flare and Miasma 2 (for AoE spam and weaving). In 4.x in dungeons you'd do something like this: cast your dots on mobs -> bane -> miasma 2 -> shadow flare -> miasma 2 spam -> dots + bane again if your party dps was low. Currently you do the folloiwing -> AoW spam. ST rotation also used all your dots (including miasma 2).

WHM used to have 3 dots, one of which AoE to be alternated between holy and healing spells. Plus Fluid Aura.

AST was the only one with 1 nuke and 1 dot, but it had to deal with cards every 30 seconds and it had buff time extensions.

Do you really not see how less braindead healer dps was in 4.0 and 3.0? It certainly wasn't complex, but it was much more engaging that it is now.

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Envoyé par Gemina

Your arguments are starting to sound more like pissed off little rants than anything else. They didn't remove cleric stance to encourage more players to play the role, it was done because it was a clunky, stupid design that was death sentence for a tank. That along with this "more interesting" DPS skillset for (just SCH mind you) lead to too many healers tunnel visioning on damage, and/or panic healing with CS still up. If you think getting rid of CS actually worsened the state of healers, you couldn't be more wrong.

You're also missing my point. People screwing up in CF is WAY different than screwing up in savage/ultimate. If just you and the tank is up in Savage, what is the probability of still getting a clear without the encounter resetting? As a matter of fact, during your time doing savage, how often would you say encounters fail, or you don't get a clear at all and have to try again later? When was the last time you didn't clear Copied Factory, or any normal mode raid/trial? Starting to see the difference? My point is that it is ok to use GCDs on heals in this content because players are screwing up all the time so it is necessary. In savage, if you're having to use GCDs on heals, something's not right, and the probability of the clear goes down.

I should also correct myself. While I haven't done any relevant savage, I've definitely done them unsynced. Even here if you screw up it's a reset. So I don't know what you're talking about. Copied Factory having any sort of similar script to a savage encounter is as accurate as a broken clock. What the bosses do is scripted, sure. But you just never know who is going to get hit by what, and you may have to go well out of script and support the other alliances.

"Oh, you mean the stuff they took away?"

Sure. If you say so.

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Hey man if thats how you feel that's how you feel. Your feelings don't really make my points not arguments.

They absolutely removed cleric stance to encourage more people to play the role. Those who didn't main healers or were new to the role panicked and caused deaths more than anyone. People who played SCH at a higher level didn't tunnel nearly as often as you think. Not to say those people NEVER made mistakes, just that it was a less common occurance.

Me: yeah the difficulty and heal checks are increased in savage but normal modes and other casual content are no less scripted. You have to heal mistakes in savage just like you do in casual content. Savage is simply more punishing about it.

You: [some nonsense about how difficulty makes it hard to recover so somehow people screwing up in alliance raid makes it more random because the encounter doesn't necessarily have to reset in CF].

Examples of skills pruned that are "more dots or some kind of haste" or other buff/debuff: literally every card effect but balance, fey wind, divine seal, eye for an eye, virus, stoneskin, a bunch of dots. Oh, and the slow on shadowflare.

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Envoyé par SamRF

Healer dps is unfairly boring

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Tbf, DPS healing is pretty boring too

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Envoyé par MushyMusashi

Tbf, DPS healing is pretty boring too

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A DPS isn’t generally healing 75% of the time though.

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Envoyé par EpicOverlord85

A DPS isn’t generally healing 75% of the time though.

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We heal 75% of the time O_o

Always thought it was more around 30-50% depending on group ability.

Also rdm and smn could theoretically have 100% heal uptime just rdm go oom with 0 dps and smn heal is pathetic to say the least

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Envoyé par Corbeau

Let me tell you a story of how a healer was once (re-)designed in a certain MMO. It was a melee class with it's damaging abilities intimately tied to it's healing output despite only having 3 DPS buttons and a couple of basic healing spells.

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Now you bring up WoW. Putting the instanced content aside, WoW had a pretty great solution for healer mains to have more fun and be more engaged in solo content, namely the spec system. Every class with healer also has a dps spec, so while you are doing solo content you can switch to a dps spec while leveling the same class, and if I remember correctly, gear also adjusts itself to be compatible with either spec (at least when you are leveling) so only thing you'd have to change when switching between specs is weapon.

FFXIV sort of has the same with SCH & SMN and it's a pretty awesome 2 for 1 deal imo, since you could perhaps do solo content (going through expansion for example) with SMN and switch to SCH whenever you need to do an instance. Only potential downside would be that unlike in WoW you need different gear for the jobs, but this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I was wondering if perhaps the other healers could also benefit from a 2 for 1 deal? Maybe have PLD merge with WHM, AST with... idk dancer? Or have completely new dps/tank jobs (next expansion perhaps) that level together with corresponding healer job. Necromancer with White Mage would be cool, and Time Mage with Astrologian. OR they could perhaps release them as limited jobs just like blue mage (without level cap) which can't be used in instanced content. So you could use the corresponding limited job in solo content and then switch to the main job for instances (of course I'd prefer them not being limited jobs). Now this doesn't fix boring healer dps in instances, but arguably solo content is actually most of the game for majority of community.

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Envoyé par Crushnight

We heal 75% of the time O_o

Always thought it was more around 30-50% depending on group ability.

Also rdm and smn could theoretically have 100% heal uptime just rdm go oom with 0 dps and smn heal is pathetic to say the least

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In a good party, healers spend approximately 90-95% and 70-80% of their GCD for offensive spells in savage and ultimate content respectively.

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Envoyé par Crushnight

We heal 75% of the time O_o

Always thought it was more around 30-50% depending on group ability.

Also rdm and smn could theoretically have 100% heal uptime just rdm go oom with 0 dps and smn heal is pathetic to say the least

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I meant that a DPS that who can heal generally will only be healing maybe 25% of time, the other 75% of the time they’re DPSing so a DPS having a shallow healing kit isn’t a big deal as their DPS rotation and mechanics generally make up for that.

Now on the flip side of that a healer is still only healing about 25-30% of the time as it’s extremely easy to keep everyone up at a good amount of health just as long as people aren’t purposely eating damage and as a result are DPSing the other 70-75% of the time so us having a shallow DPS kit is not ok as it leaves us clicking 1 button 75% of the time.

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Envoyé par EpicOverlord85

I meant that a DPS that who can heal generally will only be healing maybe 25% of time, the other 75% of the time they’re DPSing so a DPS having a shallow healing kit isn’t a big deal as their DPS rotation and mechanics generally make up for that.

Now on the flip side of that a healer is still only healing about 25-30% of the time as it’s extremely easy to keep everyone up at a good amount of health just as long as people aren’t purposely eating damage and as a result are DPSing the other 70-75% of the time so us having a shallow DPS kit is not ok as it leaves us clicking 1 button 75% of the time.

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Keep in mind my original response was to someone who stated that DPS healing was boring in response to the OPs “Healing DPS is unfairly boring.” I more or less was just trying to state that it’s not the same situation as the DPS classes have some complexity to their main job, DPSing, whereas healers don’t have complexity on either end. We just spend far too much time hitting one button over and over again.

I thought it was common knowledge healer DPS is pretty garbage because they're meant to heal, and solo fights involve just outlasting whatever is trying to kill you by healing and slowly picking at their health. :p

But I guess it's a lot more noticeable in FFXIV than a game like WoW where healing classes have DPS specializations. Alas, I think the fact we can multi-class in FFXIV means we have more stratification of roles for solo'ing. However, to be fair, healers and tanks both make up for being painfully slow in world/quest content by having insanely short queue lines. I don't know how solo healer mains do it without going insane, but I do know I'm never touching solo world content with any healer role unless I absolutely have to ever since I did a quest once to bump AST to 35. I am shuddering at the prospect of leveling a WHM even now, but if nothing else, at least I have PotD, haha.

From a 'class fantasy'/lore perspective, all the jobs the WoL takes on should be able to handle their own in a fight. Let's not forget that even the white mages of Amdapor were able to scrap with Mhachi black mages. From a gameplay perspective, it's a trivial thing to 'keep the party' alive for the majority of content at which you're capping out the maximum-allowable ilvl for your gear, leaving you with little to do other than 1 single target and 1 AoE spell over and over again, while chucking in the odd shield/regen/whatever (as a SCH).

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Envoyé par kujoestars

I thought it was common knowledge healer DPS is pretty garbage because they're meant to heal, and solo fights involve just outlasting whatever is trying to kill you by healing and slowly picking at their health. :p

But I guess it's a lot more noticeable in FFXIV than a game like WoW where healing classes have DPS specializations. Alas, I think the fact we can multi-class in FFXIV means we have more stratification of roles for solo'ing. However, to be fair, healers and tanks both make up for being painfully slow in world/quest content by having insanely short queue lines. I don't know how solo healer mains do it without going insane, but I do know I'm never touching solo world content with any healer role unless I absolutely have to ever since I did a quest once to bump AST to 35. I am shuddering at the prospect of leveling a WHM even now, but if nothing else, at least I have PotD, haha.

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Depends on the MMO or the RPG, but as this is FFXIV, if we look at the track record not just for XIV but the series. Healer down time is a thing and in their down time they do damage or support in non-healing ways. This game gave a variety of damage spells to WHM and SCH to weave and it flowed and worked well, with WHM doing more burst and SCH more sustained. Then AST with its party/self buffs. This game had a really good balance with its healing spells and what it does in its downtime and the game arguably was designed to take advantage of our downtime. It’s not so much how MUCH damage they do but in how that is dealt, because nowadays it feels like a single button spam.

Then looking at a track record into other FF games, the majority of the time you had a job or character with a healing focus they had some extra choices for support and damage, because you don’t have a big continuous push for healing (and is true for this MMO).



As an example when I felt SCH was at its peak for DPS variety:
Miasma
Miasma 2
Bio
Bio 2
Shadowflare
Bane
Energy Drain
Broil
Ruin II


SCH now:
Biolysis
Broil 3
Ruin II
Art of War
Energy Drain

Energy Drain was given back after complaints.
Your AOE rotation has been reduced to 1 button. Whereas it was 6 before (miasma, bio, bio 2, bane, shadowflare, miasma 2)
Your single target has been reduced to 2 buttons with the occasional 1 extra thrown in (broil 3 + ruin 2, with occasional biolysis or energy drain), whereas before, technically your entire arsenal (minus bane) could be useful to put on a single target, which I count 8

So it makes a massive difference to how it feels to play. and overall DPS wise, healers were still the lowest.

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Envoyé par Saefinn

As an example when I felt SCH was at its peak for DPS variety:
Miasma
Miasma 2
Bio
Bio 2
Shadowflare
Bane
Energy Drain
Broil
Ruin II
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And for even more fun you could cross-class Aero for an additional 18s dot for single-target or manually put it up on a small group to effectively get five dots (six if you count Shadowflare).

Since Protect, Stoneskin, Swiftcast, Cleric Stance from cnj and thm were already locked in on Scholar I also had the choice to pick Blizzard 2 over Aero. Even a short while we could pick Thunder, but that was remove relativiely early. I remember trying Blizzard 2, but standing still pressing one button in a pack really wasn't anywhere as fun as individually placing Aero and having more to keep track of. So it was good I had the choice.

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Envoyé par Lastelli

But SCH also had Shadow Flare and Miasma 2 (for AoE spam and weaving). In 4.x in dungeons you'd do something like this: cast your dots on mobs -> bane -> miasma 2 -> shadow flare -> miasma 2 spam -> dots + bane again if your party dps was low. Currently you do the folloiwing -> AoW spam. ST rotation also used all your dots (including miasma 2).


WHM used to have 3 dots, one of which AoE to be alternated between holy and healing spells. Plus Fluid Aura.

AST was the only one with 1 nuke and 1 dot, but it had to deal with cards every 30 seconds and it had buff time extensions.

Do you really not see how less braindead healer dps was in 4.0 and 3.0? It certainly wasn't complex, but it was much more engaging that it is now.

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I'm well aware of what the healers used to have. I am by no means the best healer out there, but I have been doing it and participating in these discussions for a long time. If you feel this needs to be explained to me, then you don't know where I am coming from at all.

Their DPS, even 3.0 SCH, was never engaging for me. It was ALWAYS what I did when heals weren't needed, which was most of the time. This should quickly add up to my boredom in general with the role due to having such a high DPS uptime. However, this boredom was really only present and exacerbated during encounters with a low threat level such as dungeons, unsynced runs, MSQ instances, FATES, etc.

I've always had the most fun healing when I am pushed, and the DPS uptime drops significantly. This is why I encourage tanks to pull the whole effin dungeon, and spend most of my time in random groups. However, I can admit that some skills such as Aero 3 and Shadow Flare were very satisfying to use. I definitely see nothing wrong with giving healers their AoE DoTs back, and I am confident they will return.

Let me see if I can put a different spin on it, and this is very likely how the devs view the issue with healing, which is no doubt different from what most of you believe is the problem. The healing role in FFXIV is the only role in this game that does not use GCDs (for the most part) to perform their primary duty during encounters. However, it is also the role that has the most GCDs that do no damage. The question then becomes which resources do you allocate to these type of skills, and how much potency should be given to them? In my opinion, they have it backwards.

I totally get wanting more complex/engaging gameplay as a healer. Where we arrive at an impasse is that I am adamant about this more complex and engaging gameplay to come from more GCDs spent towards healing, NOT DPSing. I understand completely that with encounter design the way it is now, the only feasible answer is to add more complex DPS for healers. You need to understand that I push for a different alternative because again, healer DPS even for 3.0 SCH was always painfully boring to me.

It is ludicrous to me to sit here and talk about making healing more interesting by adding more complex and engaging DPS. Do YOU not see the conundrum in that? I will never push for that. I also tend to focus in on the role in general with topics such as these since it is the healing role that is being addressed. Each healer has respective issues of their own, and for the record, the DPS gutting of SCH I feel is one of them. I strongly dislike how much they have alienated the job from its roots, but despite its shortcomings, it remains my favorite job to take into more difficult content, and a big reason for this is because its strong identity as a damage mitigator has remained intact.

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Envoyé par Gemina

I totally get wanting more complex/engaging gameplay as a healer. Where we arrive at an impasse is that I am adamant about this more complex and engaging gameplay to come from more GCDs spent towards healing, NOT DPSing. I understand completely that with encounter design the way it is now, the only feasible answer is to add more complex DPS for healers. You need to understand that I push for a different alternative because again, healer DPS even for 3.0 SCH was always painfully boring to me.

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Then you're pushing for something that is not realistic. Give up. Devs will NEVER rework the whole healing kit of the three jobs (which is required to shift the focus more on GCD healing), and change their encounter design.

Many people asking for more engaging dps rotations do not necessarily think that the only way to make healers more interesting is by giving them more diversity in their offensive kit. They just realize, given the devs track record, that they will not deviate from the current design, so they're asking for the only thing they know they can get...because they had it in previous expansions.

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Envoyé par kujoestars

I thought it was common knowledge healer DPS is pretty garbage because they're meant to heal, and solo fights involve just outlasting whatever is trying to kill you by healing and slowly picking at their health. :p

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Common knowledge? More like common misconception.

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Envoyé par Gemina

snip.

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I think how you want things is a fair request. You'd rather be more pushed to the healing side.

But I'm in the frame of mind of, there's no reason why we can't have both. Reduce our healing downtime to make that more engaging and make DPS more engaging (and I miss the status effects from DPS skills too). The standard people are asking for DPS is the one SE already set in ARR and HW, rather than anything unreasonable. And I don't think it'd require a rework of encounter design, just encounter rework would be needed if they stick to the current healer design philosophy. Potencies can be nerfs, skills can be gutted. See Blue Mage healing: bare minimal healing kit, engaging healing experience (by comparison), engaging DPS experience. In reference to the poster above me "they will never rework the whole healing kit of the three jobs", then I look to Dark Knight and Machinist who had their entirely healing kit reworked. Then I look at how Paladin went from a dull 1,2,3 rotation tank to one that's pretty varied and interesting. Then I look at ARR/HW BRD, which I hated and SB/ShB BRD which feel a lot different, play a lot different and I enjoy. Or the fact that SMN is close to being a complete redesign, because it used to be a DoT mage, but maintaining DoT's is now only a small part of it. I mean, seeing how they've dealt with healers, sure, is enough to make me pessimistic they'd not bother with it, but at the same time, I don't think them doing it is unrealistic given they /have/ completely reworked stuff before, so 'NEVER' is a bit too definite.

However, having a balance of healing focus and DPS focus I felt it kinda was there for ARR SCH. By struggling to keep health up versus WHM, I found I was healing more on SCH versus WHM and using more of my toolkit competently to compensate that weakness. At the same time, I had a varied DPS for when inevitably I had downtime. I don't think they'll fully clear healer downtime and of course, healers will need to do a certain amount of content solo, so that side should also be engaging. And to me, I view the reason SCH got nice DoT's was because they'd have less downtime and probably why SCH was OP when they have SCH more of an ability to get people's HP up because their downtime was increased which meant they could do more damage.

The downside is that this raises the skill floor for playing healers and less approachable for people on the lower end of the scale of skill or experience. However, I think that could be mitigated is different healers embraced different play styles. Because, again, I think this was something they had right in ARR, SCH gave me more work to do versus WHM and WHM was what I tended to recommend to newbies who had never healed but was prepared to help out with learning SCH. Maybe WHM was still too intimidating for some? If so, it might have been good justification for a 4th healer respecting those who praise ShB's healer design.

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Envoyé par Gemina

I\\'m well aware of what the healers used to have. I am by no means the best healer out there, but I have been doing it and participating in these discussions for a long time. If you feel this needs to be explained to me, then you don\\'t know where I am coming from at all.

Their DPS, even 3.0 SCH, was never engaging for me. It was ALWAYS what I did when heals weren\\'t needed, which was most of the time. This should quickly add up to my boredom in general with the role due to having such a high DPS uptime. However, this boredom was really only present and exacerbated during encounters with a low threat level such as dungeons, unsynced runs, MSQ instances, FATES, etc.

I\\'ve always had the most fun healing when I am pushed, and the DPS uptime drops significantly. This is why I encourage tanks to pull the whole effin dungeon, and spend most of my time in random groups. However, I can admit that some skills such as Aero 3 and Shadow Flare were very satisfying to use. I definitely see nothing wrong with giving healers their AoE DoTs back, and I am confident they will return.

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I don\\'t think that is the best solution currently in the future sure but not for the current problems.

The devs have proven multiple times they do not care for previous expansions content when designing new jobs or reworking old jobs. Any new healer rework and any encounter design that tailors to it would be for the newest expansion in mind only. Asking any new healer to wait until you hit 81 and do dungeons then you\\'ll start having a good time is asking for lot of effort or money just to see if true.

Asking for dps skills back can be added earlier and this adds a little more engagement during the downtime (that gets worse the more competent the group is + all previous dungeons get nerfed on top from when they were current) and can be done earlier in levels, any new healing tools would be redundant we just don\\'t need them anymore at earlier levels we were plenty sufficient before they added more in ShB.

Adding back dps skills earlier for healers would be better for healers to keep engagement for newer healers and make them want to stay and not hope for bad players for enjoyment in group content or something less mind numbing for solo content, than a healing fight design rework that would be exclusive to 6.0 content. The devs need to actually think for once about how do these changes affect the previous experience (they won\\'t but they should).

1 thing is clear no matter what the devs do to healers they do not care how it effects ARR, HW, SB, and come 6.0 ShB content.

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Envoyé par Sloprano

And for even more fun you could cross-class Aero for an additional 18s dot for single-target or manually put it up on a small group to effectively get five dots (six if you count Shadowflare).

Since Protect, Stoneskin, Swiftcast, Cleric Stance from cnj and thm were already locked in on Scholar I also had the choice to pick Blizzard 2 over Aero. Even a short while we could pick Thunder, but that was remove relativiely early. I remember trying Blizzard 2, but standing still pressing one button in a pack really wasn't anywhere as fun as individually placing Aero and having more to keep track of. So it was good I had the choice.

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This is also true. To me Blizzard II was an AoE version of Ruin. After I've got all my DoT's down and baned, Shadowflare up then I could just follow with a few Blizzard II until I need to go back and reapply.

Once you start looking at what we had, it's a lot that was lost. Although on paper it looks like half of our abilities, but in practice, it's cut our skill use more dramatically than half before you get onto cross class stuff that was lost by them changing that system.

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Envoyé par Lastelli

Then you're pushing for something that is not realistic. Give up. Devs will NEVER rework the whole healing kit of the three jobs (which is required to shift the focus more on GCD healing), and change their encounter design.

Many people asking for more engaging dps rotations do not necessarily think that the only way to make healers more interesting is by giving them more diversity in their offensive kit. They just realize, given the devs track record, that they will not deviate from the current design, so they're asking for the only thing they know they can get...because they had it in previous expansions.

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Ah, so you mean join the rest of you who have given up? Is that what you're saying? I find very little truth in your statement. Some healers don't care to heal at all, and love that 90% DPS uptime, and simply want more skills to squeeze into that window. If you want to use the dev track record, then what makes you think healers will ever be as they once were? Their track record has shown to continue to strip healers of offensive skills each expansion.

And I'm not asking for healing kits to be reworked. Whatever gave that impression? All I suggested was giving healers their AoE DoTs back, which makes sense considering most jobs have ST and AoE variants of skills. I'm not even really asking for encounter design to be changed all that much either with the exception of reducing DPS uptime.

I find that the problem is the devs won't budge EITHER way. No more offense to fill in downtime. No additional healing requirement to reduce the downtime. We basically now have two factions of healers who are unhappy due in large part to the indecisiveness of the devs.

Decent healers who had any independent thought were thinking this when they released the previews.

"Wait until it goes live and THEN make judgements" we were told.

So we did

"Maybe SE will finally make mobs hit harder so healer's will have to heal!"

Nope. Still casting just as many GCD's on damage spells as before. Just now the rotation is 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2

And again and again we were proved right. It's like the FFXIV development team has no idea that healers have to be able to complete the MSQ. They need damage to do that.

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Envoyé par Gemina

I find that the problem is the devs won't budge EITHER way. No more offense to fill in downtime. No additional healing requirement to reduce the downtime. We basically now have two factions of healers who are unhappy due in large part to the indecisiveness of the devs.

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I have this uneasy feeling that the devs simply do not care about how healers are actually played. Its not that devs want to push towards pure healing, towards DPS/healing hybrid, its just that they don't care.

Healing kits right now are basically priority lists, without much synergy between the pieces (SCH's 60,70,80 skills anyone?). A lot of people were expecting DNC to be a healer on release, and yet it completely surprised the devs to hear it. The focus of the one bit of info we got pre-ShB about healers was a focus on pure healing, and that turned out to be completely out of touch with the actual content released. The #1 thing asked for WHM in SB was some sort of DPS utility, and they still didn't get any come ShB. AST was way underpowered at ShB's launch. SCH was missing Energy Drain, a key skill. SB's SCH did not have Miasma 2 on release. The one feature everyone loved about SB's AST, its cards, had all its fun sucked out.

I personally don't mind if healers are made fun through healing or DPS mechanics (although the latter are more likely since it doesn't involve changing old content and helps in solo duties). But it just seems the devs don't care.

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Envoyé par Saefinn

snip.

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On the contrary, I would love more DPS skills. Just not any kind of a true DPS rotation. I don't feel this is a good design for healers, and will very likely not make it into FFXIV. But more offensive skills that interact with the battlefield or are rewarded to the healer. I really enjoy skills like Earthly Star that give the player something to think about before actually using it. Skills like Misery that work based on a return. I am all for things like this, but at the same time want to spend more time healing. If this requires raising the skill ceiling a bit, then I am for that too. Accessibility doesn't have to come through over simplification.

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Envoyé par Gemina

Ah, so you mean join the rest of you who have given up? Is that what you're saying? I find very little truth in your statement. Some healers don't care to heal at all, and love that 90% DPS uptime, and simply want more skills to squeeze into that window. If you want to use the dev track record, then what makes you think healers will ever be as they once were? Their track record has shown to continue to strip healers of offensive skills each expansion.

And I'm not asking for healing kits to be reworked. Whatever gave that impression? All I suggested was giving healers their AoE DoTs back, which makes sense considering most jobs have ST and AoE variants of skills. I'm not even really asking for encounter design to be changed all that much either with the exception of reducing DPS uptime.

I find that the problem is the devs won't budge EITHER way. No more offense to fill in downtime. No additional healing requirement to reduce the downtime. We basically now have two factions of healers who are unhappy due in large part to the indecisiveness of the devs.

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Reworking healing kits is not going to give you "more interesting" healing. They would need to redesign their whole encounter philosophy and they have refused to do so.

Nerfing or changing healing kits while leaving the encounter design as is, is just going to boil down to "find the minimum amount of GCD healing required and fill the rest of your time with dps," the way its always been.


You seem to have a problem with those asking for more interesting things to fill that time with.

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Gasp! It's like they want the healers to actually focus on healing!

I understand the complaint, but DPSing as a healer is a bonus for making sure everyone is okay. Healers have so much support especially between SCH and AST that even if they aren't casting their DPS skills their support skills more than make up for it.

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Remember when this was the go to response for healer DPS being dumbed down? Meanwhile, we look at how Scholar and Astro actually play in 5.x, and what to do you know. They're still primarily spamming Broil and Malefic, respectively. In fact, I looked up a Scholar I know who cleared TEA. 250 DPS abilities compared to 103 healing abilities (both GCD and oGCD compared). So about that "we want healers to heal more" argument. Hardest content in the game and healers are still spending 60% of it dealing damage.

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Envoyé par Gemina

I'm not even really asking for encounter design to be changed all that much either with the exception of reducing DPS uptime.

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They cannot do that. The current healing kit allows to dps 60+% of the time in the first 2 phases of TEA, and that is the most healing intensive content ever released in the game, because there are too many oGCD heals. The only way to reduce dps uptime for healers without reworking them are the following:
1) Make MP management relevant, meaning that healers playing efficiently by today's standards will go OOM no matter what -> bad idea, this would force healers to do nothing and that's not very engaging;
2) Increase damage output to the point healers are forced to use their GCD healing spells more frequently -> most healers won't be able to keep up and they would have to significantly decrese the mp cost of every healing spell because they're so inefficient right now. Of course this would result in many healers switching to dps.

Either rework healers or rework content, specifically incoming damage patterns (or both), there's no other way to force healers to focus on their GCD heals. And by the way, the reason why healers currently focus so much on dps is because that's the only measure of a healer's skill level...because the devs are too afraid to make healing challenging enough to be itself a measure of a player's ability.

I mean, it's very telling that all the ultimate fights could be solo-healed, wouldn't you agree?

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Envoyé par Lastelli

2) Increase damage output to the point healers are forced to use their GCD healing spells more frequently -> most healers won't be able to keep up and they would have to significantly decrese the mp cost of every healing spell because they're so inefficient right now. Of course this would result in many healers switching to dps.

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The irony here is many healer mains abandoned them to DPS this expansion because they find them boring now. I'd be curious just how big an impact this would have since I suspect plenty of players would return to healers if they were harder.

Personally, I think the dev team could strike a decent middle ground if they tried. Unfortunately, you're very much correct. They'd rather focus on players who spam Medica II for everything than push healers in Savage. Which is why they've been struggling to balance them for four years now. Their current design philosophy can't work at the higher level. But now even players with no interest in raiding are complaining how boring healers are. So something has to break. Either they give in and make healing harder or fully embrace the DPS route. I suspect the latter, myself.

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Envoyé par Lastelli

They cannot do that. The current healing kit allows to dps 60+% of the time in the first 2 phases of TEA, and that is the most healing intensive content ever released in the game, because there are too many oGCD heals. The only way to reduce dps uptime for healers without reworking them are the following:
1) Make MP management relevant, meaning that healers playing efficiently by today's standards will go OOM no matter what -> bad idea, this would force healers to do nothing and that's not very engaging;
2) Increase damage output to the point healers are forced to use their GCD healing spells more frequently -> most healers won't be able to keep up and they would have to significantly decrese the mp cost of every healing spell because they're so inefficient right now. Of course this would result in many healers switching to dps.

Either rework healers or rework content, specifically incoming damage patterns (or both), there's no other way to force healers to focus on their GCD heals. And by the way, the reason why healers currently focus so much on dps is because that's the only measure of a healer's skill level...because the devs are too afraid to make healing challenging enough to be itself a measure of a player's ability.

I mean, it's very telling that all the ultimate fights could be solo-healed, wouldn't you agree?

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I don't think they have to increase outgoing damage to force healers to use more GCD heals. I agree that the philosophy here isn't very good. I think all they have to do is adjust ogcd and GCD heals. I think ogcd heals should support the healing requirement, not outright take it completely over. I know this would result in healers doing less overall damage. I know this would affect encounters and put more pressure on DPS and tanks to push phases. And I say good. Where do I sign up?

I think a healer being able to solo heal in any encounter to be quite telling, and it happens in just about all content.

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Envoyé par Gemina

I don't think they have to increase outgoing damage to force healers to use more GCD heals. I agree that the philosophy here isn't very good. I think all they have to do is adjust ogcd and GCD heals. I think ogcd heals should support the healing requirement, not outright take it completely over. I know this would result in healers doing less overall damage. I know this would affect encounters and put more pressure on DPS and tanks to push phases. And I say good. Where do I sign up?

I think a healer being able to solo heal in any encounter to be quite telling, and it happens in just about all content.

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It would take -way- more than a simple adjustment to GCD and oGCD heals to engage me. I don't think replacing Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare with Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure Cure would be some refreshing groundbreaking shift. The way GCD healing kits are designed is as boring as the DPS kits.

Either you give healers a DPS kit with greater complexity or you ramp up the constant attrition damage in encounters. Either one could work by putting more buttons into consistent use.

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Envoyé par Corbeau

Either you give healers a DPS kit with greater complexity or you ramp up the constant attrition damage in encounters. Either one could work by putting more buttons into consistent use.

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agreed, that is pretty much the two things we can think that might solve the healers boring gameplay.
either all the runs will have much more frequent damage intervals making healers spam their heals more frequent with less downtime ,or give healers additional skills to use during downtime.
this is pretty much the only 2 ways that could solve this.(if SE would do both ,it would be the best really)

healers should be designed with 2 parts in their kits, their heals and their non-heal skills. healers need to have a kit that allow fluid swap between those things.
u have skills u spam normally like dps,buffs and debuffs and when party is in danger u swap to your healing skills.
u cant make a class gameplay be 70% 1 button smash ,no matter what excuse SE gave ,that is simply wrong design plain and simple.
dps skills should be simple for healers but with the lack of actual skills to use such as applying buffs and applying debuffs ,combine with the fact that 70% of the time in all content is not healing there is not denying the fact that these are the 2 major issues in healer gameplay that must be changed for healers to be fun.

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Envoyé par Gemina

I don't think they have to increase outgoing damage to force healers to use more GCD heals. I agree that the philosophy here isn't very good. I think all they have to do is adjust ogcd and GCD heals. I think ogcd heals should support the healing requirement, not outright take it completely over. I know this would result in healers doing less overall damage. I know this would affect encounters and put more pressure on DPS and tanks to push phases. And I say good. Where do I sign up?

I think a healer being able to solo heal in any encounter to be quite telling, and it happens in just about all content.

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Unless you straight up nerf healing potency by upwards of 50% or remove several oGCDs entirely, increasing the outgoing damage is the only way to force GCD healing. We simply have far too many tools at our disposal; many of which are comically overpowered given how low the outgoing damage actually is.

Ultimately, replacing Glare spam with Cure II spam simply moves the goal post without addressing the actual problem. This is one of the reasons I wish they'd abandon the typical "healer" role and make them Support instead. Let Healer/Support have everything from buffs, debuffs, healing and etc. That accomplishes the same thing—less focus on DPS—but makes your downtime far more engaging. Alas, the devs will never do this as it adds a pretty decent degree of complexity to the job. And if Shadowbringers has taught us anything. They want to make jobs easier, not harder. Much as I dislike that approach.

Another thing that goes against healer kits that also increases hlr downtime is the overabundance of self healing/survivability tools non healers have access to.

Plds can solo dungeon fights(and I am talking ShB dungeons here) if no dps check in place or keep dps alive too for far longer due to Clemency, great for plds but hurts healers. Gnb regen is good enough for decent health back and then brutal shell is baked into combo for ammo so constantly getting health back regularly just low. Not sure on NF on war but Equilibrium was always potent heal.Drk however lost a bit of its hp regeneration tools Abyssal drain no longer spammable also no more DA soul eater.

Melee have second wind and bloodbath for self healing, range have mitigation + second wind, brd gives healing up making our strong heals stronger, dnc has curing waltz aoe which when used right is free hlr aoe heal. Rdm with vercure can save lives (shouldn't need to but it is a very potent option), blm has manaward and smn has titan shield both good mitigation reducing heals, smn also getting phoenix regen which is good(ever have 3+ smns in your C.F. party if all on rotation massive health regen whenever phoenix is out).

Literally every job has ways to reduce healing needed, good for self survivability, lowers amount healers can contribute healing however, more so in higher end play but can happen in lower content, ik I get annoyed at plds using clemency in dungeons especially with excog on them.

I think for healers to have to heal more they would also need to look at all the healing tools non healer jobs have and cut down a little. I think 1 survivability tool(as in getting hp back) per non hlr job is enough no more no less would be fine.

With the exception of Clemency, which is a huge DPS loss, the self-healing tools for other roles are laughable compared to what a healer can output. The existence of those tools isn't the problem, it's how powerful healer abilities are relative to the incoming damage.

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Envoyé par Saefinn

Depends on the MMO or the RPG, but as this is FFXIV, if we look at the track record not just for XIV but the series. Healer down time is a thing and in their down time they do damage or support in non-healing ways. This game gave a variety of damage spells to WHM and SCH to weave and it flowed and worked well, with WHM doing more burst and SCH more sustained. Then AST with its party/self buffs. This game had a really good balance with its healing spells and what it does in its downtime and the game arguably was designed to take advantage of our downtime. It’s not so much how MUCH damage they do but in how that is dealt, because nowadays it feels like a single button spam.

Then looking at a track record into other FF games, the majority of the time you had a job or character with a healing focus they had some extra choices for support and damage, because you don’t have a big continuous push for healing (and is true for this MMO).



As an example when I felt SCH was at its peak for DPS variety:
Miasma
Miasma 2
Bio
Bio 2
Shadowflare
Bane
Energy Drain
Broil
Ruin II


SCH now:
Biolysis
Broil 3
Ruin II
Art of War
Energy Drain

Energy Drain was given back after complaints.
Your AOE rotation has been reduced to 1 button. Whereas it was 6 before (miasma, bio, bio 2, bane, shadowflare, miasma 2)
Your single target has been reduced to 2 buttons with the occasional 1 extra thrown in (broil 3 + ruin 2, with occasional biolysis or energy drain), whereas before, technically your entire arsenal (minus bane) could be useful to put on a single target, which I count 8

So it makes a massive difference to how it feels to play. and overall DPS wise, healers were still the lowest.

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Fair points. And it finally occurred to me in at least one RPG-type game that the healer class still has a good damaging attack even if the majority of their kit consists of heals/buffs/etc. Of course it still isn't made for DPS, but having at least one good damaging move (especially if it's both an AoE and DoT) would help counteract a smaller DPS kit.

At the very least, it would make solo'ing content as a healer more bearable; still not over the fact it takes forever to Malefic and Combust anything, lol. So yeah, either we have more stuff in the kit or make what we have more powerful.