The Healer DPS Problem, The Toxicity it incites

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Honestly that either says more about you or you just have a string of really bad tanks

9 dungeons out of 10 I never have to touch a GCD heal and of those 9 5 of them I’m barely even touching an oGCD because the tank is healing themself anyway

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This. Depending on the tank I'm either cursing someone to the seventh pit of hell or... well no I'm still cursing someone to the seventh pit.

Either I'm cursing the tank because they have absolutely no idea what they're doing and no matter what CDs I have I couldn't keep them alive because they refuse to mitigate and stand in E V E R Y T H I N G (still thinking of YOU GNB in Malika's Hell with the 7 vuln stacks!) or I'm cursing the dev team for designing bores of bosses and trash because my tank is barely taking damage even in a W2W and TBs hit like a noodle even if they DON'T mitigate.

There aren't many inbetweens. Like I don't have a tank that's good, cycles through CDs and still have to GCD heal with them being the problem.

Similiar experience as SamSmoot

I wish I had these godly groups people who they barely have anything to heal.

Dungeon trash? Unless it's a WAR tank, it's use Essential Dignity when the tank dips. Oops, tank dipped again. ED. Oops, tank dipped a third time? GCD time. Also, unless they make a way so we can see the timer left on tank CDs (especially short ones) don't know when their Bloodwhetting/Heart of Corundum/TBN is up to even know if the tank is gonna pop one of those and the healer can focus on DPS. Heck, I'd even like a way to increase the size of certain buffs so it's more obvious "Oh, GNB popped Heart of Corundum. Don't heal until the buff vanishes." And especially DRK 70? You're just piling on heals because they don't even have a short CD to use on trash. Why PLD got Sheltron moved to 40's while DRK is short CD less until 70 got me besides Dark Mind.

Raids or Trials? You ever get that group where two or three people keep moving about with the "scatter" markers (aka everybody gets hit with a mechanic) then they all give up and stand still and boom? It's not like Party Finder's where people are on discord and can say "Healer stay, I'll move". And no chat bubbles to make it clear who'll stay (if a person has a macro set to say that). So again heal bombing to fix that if they even survive that.

I will agree for the most part Dungeon bosses and the majority of raids tanks are pretty self sufficient. But there are situations where I'm also pumping out heals in spurts. I prefer to keep people in the 80% or higher depending on what's coming up. I know "That's too high" but I trust the server tic as far as I can throw my car. Too many times I've waited to the last second to throw an Essential Dignity. Nope, goes on me instead and now I'm really in panic mode.

Just another reason I won't touch anything higher than duty roulette goods I guess. I can't stand the concept of "Letting people be at 50% is fine". Maybe if the netcode wasn't such garbage unless you're on NTT's backbone.

I saw "healer problem" in the title and my mind instantly went to WoW forums PTSD with healer complaints over there.

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Originally Posted by Darnath

Similiar experience as SamSmoot

I wish I had these godly groups people who they barely have anything to heal.

Dungeon trash? Unless it's a WAR tank, it's use Essential Dignity when the tank dips. Oops, tank dipped again. ED. Oops, tank dipped a third time? GCD time. Also, unless they make a way so we can see the timer left on tank CDs (especially short ones) don't know when their Bloodwhetting/Heart of Corundum/TBN is up to even know if the tank is gonna pop one of those and the healer can focus on DPS. Heck, I'd even like a way to increase the size of certain buffs so it's more obvious "Oh, GNB popped Heart of Corundum. Don't heal until the buff vanishes." And especially DRK 70? You're just piling on heals because they don't even have a short CD to use on trash. Why PLD got Sheltron moved to 40's while DRK is short CD less until 70 got me besides Dark Mind.

Raids or Trials? You ever get that group where two or three people keep moving about with the "scatter" markers (aka everybody gets hit with a mechanic) then they all give up and stand still and boom? It's not like Party Finder's where people are on discord and can say "Healer stay, I'll move". And no chat bubbles to make it clear who'll stay (if a person has a macro set to say that). So again heal bombing to fix that if they even survive that.

I will agree for the most part Dungeon bosses and the majority of raids tanks are pretty self sufficient. But there are situations where I'm also pumping out heals in spurts. I prefer to keep people in the 80% or higher depending on what's coming up. I know "That's too high" but I trust the server tic as far as I can throw my car. Too many times I've waited to the last second to throw an Essential Dignity. Nope, goes on me instead and now I'm really in panic mode.

Just another reason I won't touch anything higher than duty roulette goods I guess. I can't stand the concept of "Letting people be at 50% is fine". Maybe if the netcode wasn't such garbage unless you're on NTT's backbone.

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I live in Australia on NA and 20% is still too high

Not like the tanks will even let themselves get that low with their level of self sustain though

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Originally Posted by Darnath

Dungeon trash? Unless it's a WAR tank, it's use Essential Dignity when the tank dips. Oops, tank dipped again. ED. Oops, tank dipped a third time? GCD time.

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This is more of a problem with gear scaling coupled with the strange difficulty spikes in leveling dungeons vs Experto.

Dungeons are much more threatening at or around min ilvl. The problem is that in leveling dungeons it's pretty common for people to be around that mark, whereas once you hit the level cap and get a couple of weeks of tome+24 man gear down you're absolutely smoking the recommended ilvls for expert roulette and thus we get the face roll.

I recently did a run of Lapis and avoided all healing oGCDs with only Assize on cooldown as usual. No benisons, no tetras, no bene, no asylum and just one fat fingered PI at the end of boss 2. I got a ~90% dps log on that run despite having to use Regen etc as my main source of healing on a DRK tank. Did I have to let the tank dip low to get that sort of damage whilst missing half of my kit? I'll let you be the judge of that.

Back onto the thread in general:

It's a depressingly common opinion that people seem to think that a healer does good DPS to the detriment of their party's safety. In the hands of a half decent player that's willing and able to pay attention, that's not the case at all. A big part of the problem is that at level 90, all we have to contribute to the party in basic endgame content is our damage which is tedious beyond belief, thus when significant swathes of the healer player base can't help but tune out and stop paying attention to the main screen I can only suggest that perhaps griping over the DPS mentality is kind of missing the point here. The real issue is how unengaging our gameplay is in casual endgame content. Until that gets addressed or we actually get another more interesting way in which we can productively contribute to the party, this isn't going to be resolved.

Healer main here. No one is saying "healers shouldn't have to heal." In fact, most healers disagree with that sentiment. The guy in the novice network was just telling you how it is. He wasn't saying that's how it *should* be.
Unfortunately, Square Enix seems to think so.
And then they turn around and say encounters aren't "designed with healer DPS in mind." Lol. Lmao.

At least this raid tier they put in some hard-hitting >unavoidable< mechanics that have the healers doing more than just hitting a single oGCD. I'm hoping they do more stuff like that.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

Healers shouldn't have to heal? In about 60% of the roulettes I join, I'm frantically trying to keep the tank alive, and I'm lucky if I have time to DPS at all.

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1. Depends on the dungeon you're synced into. As a general rule, trash pulls in leveling dungeon tend to require more healing than most capstone/all expert dungeons.
2. Your tanks just don't mitigate and/or standing in red carpets. If you get these sort of tanks in leveling dungeon, then yes you're probably going to have a bad time.
3. You're synced down to a level range where you don't have as many toolkits in reserve like in 90s. (I.e. one of the reason why Stone Vigil is notorious from healer's PoV)
4. Improper use of toolkits.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I’m gonna start a drinking campaign of my own

Take a drink any time a forum user suggests a “fix” to the game that is literally just coils

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Say goodbye to your liver. Mine got destroyed by the last drinking game.

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Originally Posted by SquishyPlushie

I saw "healer problem" in the title and my mind instantly went to WoW forums PTSD with healer complaints over there.

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Interestingly, the games have opposite problems.

FF14 there isn't enough to heal and the role is super boring.

WoW there is too much to heal and the role is super stressful.

Every % missing health should yield a % of damage down. Every % of overheal/shield should yield a damage buff.

Considering the bulk of the most dps obsessed people I've met have all been healers, they really need to make the role more demanding on the healing end.

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Originally Posted by TheNight

Actually, it did breed better players. The vocal minority pushed back and yet the game did fine. The problem was actually with the high end content being too much of a difficulty spike.

So no, you're wrong.

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Absolutely wrong. HW almost killed this game’s raiding scene and honestly it wasn’t that difficult when compared to other MMO’s first expansion pack raids.

This community has always had an issue with “gitting gud” and they would rather throw a fuss, complain and use this line about “the MSQ is why people play blah blah”. Irrelevant. Nobody parses MSQ. Savage and Ultimate are the real meat and taters of this game and boy, do you ever see how truly awful people are at gaming.

Final point, for the lulz, nobody cares about MSQ difficulty and yet SE added a “very easy” which is still too hard for people (check the forums a few months back for someone struggling on the MSQ Onsal fight). LOLGCBTW

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

Every % missing health should yield a % of damage down. Every % of overheal/shield should yield a damage buff.

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Hopefully this is sarcasm. Why make the party pay because a healer keeps their health low? That's not going to make healers who focus on dps to the detriment of their party's success (note: NOT those who balance both successfully) anymore inclined to help their parties because they aren't helping their parties in the first place.

Not to mention the issues this will cause in harder content where it's a good idea to have healers helping with dps in the lulls when there isn't damage expected. That also happens in more casual content but it's more optional in casual content and would not effect casual content as much, but would be the difference between a clear and not a clear sometimes in harder content.

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Originally Posted by Xuled

Absolutely wrong. HW almost killed this game’s raiding scene and honestly it wasn’t that difficult when compared to other MMO’s first expansion pack raids.

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It wasn'tjust the mechanics (and people not doing them) that screwed things up in HW, it was the math (at least early on). Most of those fights were reasonable mechanically, for their time. Right out of the gate we had A3S and A4S being so hilariously overtuned because SE was still mad Bahamut Prime died so fast. Even then, those fights were okay mechanically. The numbers were just tuned way higher than what was reasonable. Those two bosses killed a lot of statics.

I love playing a HEALER. I have the most fun on new content because I get to actually heal. Once the content is learned its boring asf again. Idk why they insist on dmg being easily healed by tanks. DPS on healer should be like random DOTs thrown in or or something like sage and sch where they have something to heal for them. Could easily buff their pet heals/kard heals for them to be dps healers then buff potencies of whm and ast to off set not having that so when they do get to dps its impactful. BUTTTT well just get glare mage instead again

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

It wasn'tjust the mechanics (and people not doing them) that screwed things up in HW, it was the math (at least early on). Most of those fights were reasonable mechanically, for their time. Right out of the gate we had A3S and A4S being so hilariously overtuned because SE was still mad Bahamut Prime died so fast. Even then, those fights were okay mechanically. The numbers were just tuned way higher than what was reasonable. Those two bosses killed a lot of statics.

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That's partially also down to the playerbase at the time, you still had healers never pressing a dps spell and tanks stacking parry. Those were people that raided Coils just fine and they stepped into Gordias savage with the same attitude.

But when you put those players into fights that actually required everyone to contribute to not hitting enrage of course they would fall flat on their faces.

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Originally Posted by Xuled

Absolutely wrong. HW almost killed this game’s raiding scene and honestly it wasn’t that difficult when compared to other MMO’s first expansion pack raids.

This community has always had an issue with “gitting gud” and they would rather throw a fuss, complain and use this line about “the MSQ is why people play blah blah”. Irrelevant. Nobody parses MSQ. Savage and Ultimate are the real meat and taters of this game and boy, do you ever see how truly awful people are at gaming.

Final point, for the lulz, nobody cares about MSQ difficulty and yet SE added a “very easy” which is still too hard for people (check the forums a few months back for someone struggling on the MSQ Onsal fight). LOLGCBTW

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It killed the raiding scene because while HW itself wasn’t hard Gordias was mathematically impossible week 1 and A2 and A4 were just garbage fights in general

Abandon the holy trinity!

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Originally Posted by Lunalepsy

Abandon the holy trinity!

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Either that or go all in on it. This weird inbetween has overstayed long enough. The devs need to take a direction and stick with it.

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Originally Posted by angienessyo

Considering the bulk of the most dps obsessed people I've met have all been healers, they really need to make the role more demanding on the healing end.

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Yep, that's what happens when the role has zero appeal for the people who actually want to be support/healers. The only people willing to play the role are those who enjoy using a spreadsheet to map out each and every oGCD.

The only consolation that the current design has (in casual content) is that good healers appreciate bad parties, because it actually gives them something to do. Any normal roulette, with geared and moderately-skilled players, will be easier than making mac and cheese. Because it's designed to have a near 100% success rate even for min-ilvl first-time players, like during the first week of an expansion. After the first week though, that turns into a near 100% chance of the healer being bored out of their mind... unless the party is trash. Then vuln stacks kick in and fix the damage tuning to be moderately threatening again.

I think this is less of a problem in other MMOs because you have more freedom to either run the casual content without a healer, or at least spec/gear your healer for more damage and less heals. In roulettes, you HAVE to bring a healer (or two), and they HAVE to have a healing focused kit.

I would love to solo heal some 8-man roulettes or queue for a no-healer Expert roulette as WAR. Or do some Bozja shenanigans that let me heal on Red Mage, or do a ton of damage on WHM with a couple extra damage actions.

But nah, the only choice for healers (in casual content) is being bored in under-tuned roulettes.

And yes, there's lots of other content to do like Extremes, Criterion, etc. And I do those as well. But EW relics require a ton of tomestones, and roulettes are still the best source of tomestones by far. And sometimes I just want to fight some junk, but I don't feel like rolling the dice on a PF group, ya know?

Rant over. Make more content with Lost Actions.

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Originally Posted by Leonerdo

The only consolation that the current design has (in casual content) is that good healers appreciate bad parties, because it actually gives them something to do.

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Literally me. I cheer when I get extra healing to do.

Last night someone apologized for getting hit by a mechanic that I had to cleanse death from. I was like "Don't apologize, I get to cast Esuna once a year." lol

Lost actions is such a good fix to the problem because it allows you to do anything on any role and leads to some amazing shenanigans you can’t do with the conventional system

Me holding agro on DRN with saviour+banner of limitless grace+10 healing valours+cure 4 generating infinite agro like 1.0 benediction is such a fun interaction, same as deep profane+LSS+lost font misery making you top DPS

If you are only going to pay lip service to the holy trinity anyway at least make breaking out of your own role actually fun

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Yep, that's what happens when the role has zero appeal for the people who actually want to be support/healers. The only people willing to play the role are those who enjoy using a spreadsheet to map out each and every oGCD.

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Those people have left long ago as well, because mapping out your actions in a fight is only fun when it actually matters.

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

Every % missing health should yield a % of damage down. Every % of overheal/shield should yield a damage buff.

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And vuln stacks should give damage down. Now see people do mechanics and don't stand in AoEs to keep on DPSing. lol

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

Every % missing health should yield a % of damage down. Every % of overheal/shield should yield a damage buff.

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I doubt a lot of healer mains here would want a gameplay that requires you to spam heals though...

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

And vuln stacks should give damage down. Now see people do mechanics and don't stand in AoEs to keep on DPSing. lol

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they already do this in savage and ultimate thanks to e6s

would be a lot of feedback would they make this the case for normal mode raids

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Originally Posted by Aword3213

I doubt a lot of healer mains here would want a gameplay that requires you to spam heals though...

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No because its just as boring as pressing 1. Besides. Even if over healing = buff (which is the entire opposite of how healing is played in MMOs - you're not supposed to be overhealing at all) its still a one button press. Or has everyone forgotten WHM and AST have a HoT that can tick OH and lasts for ~15 and the only time SGE/SCH has to reapply a shield on anything other than a tank is about the same because there's barely any inc damage for the party?

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

And vuln stacks should give damage down. Now see people do mechanics and don't stand in AoEs to keep on DPSing. lol

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This one is a good idea and they already do something like it. We tease each other in my static when we get hit by a tower in 10s, for instance, and get our "buff" of damage down even if the doom can be cleansed. Pretty sure I've seen more damage downs in casual content, too. It does affect the overall party ability but it's also a heavy personal hit for the person who doesn't do the mechanic, too.

Honestly healers just need a more interesting kit. They have a lot of abilities but most of them are disconnected single use heals. Horoscope, Plenary, and Recitation are the only abilities I can think of that actually interact with other abilities in the healer kit, and I really enjoy that idea and using these abilities. AST used to have a lot going on when it had royal road and minor arcana, and that excused the otherwise bland design of the actual healing part, but now none of these jobs have anything that fills down time other than single spell spam.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Those people have left long ago as well, because mapping out your actions in a fight is only fun when it actually matters.

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Ehh, in my experience there are still people who feel the need to map out actions even when you can get by just fine yoloing it.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

And vuln stacks should give damage down. Now see people do mechanics and don't stand in AoEs to keep on DPSing. lol

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I know this will get me flamed to hell and back but..

Instead of Damage Down, how about guaranteed stacking minus on your loot rolls instead?
"Yes! 99! That token is mine"
*But player failed 10 mechanics. Gets beaten by somebody who only failed mechanics once with a 91*

I don't think vuln stacks should even have been added to the game in the first place. Failing a mechanic should either just nail you with a ridiculous amount of damage (read as: if you DO survive, it's by the skin of your teeth) or outright kill you, depending on the tier of content you're doing. None of this slap on the wrist crap.

Damage down is fine. That does its job. Nobody likes getting their numbers nerfed into the ground.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I don't think vuln stacks should even have been added to the game in the first place. Failing a mechanic should either just nail you with a ridiculous amount of damage (read as: if you DO survive, it's by the skin of your teeth) or outright kill you, depending on the tier of content you're doing. None of this slap on the wrist crap.

Damage down is fine. That does its job. Nobody likes getting their numbers nerfed into the ground.

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I half agree. Anything that causes a player to take more damage because they screwed up a mechanic is more of a penalty to the healers than to the player that failed (unless it's the healer).

On the other hand, if the vuln stacks are intended to be unavoidable it can make things more interesting as a healer. Some party members may need more healing than others. It's a way to add variety to soft enrages at the end of a fight. Fight drags on too long, healers have to be healing instead of doing green DPS spam to keep everyone alive as long as possible.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I don't think vuln stacks should even have been added to the game in the first place.

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I vastly prefer getting vuln stacks over damage down tbh, because it allows you to take the stack on purpose if your healers are up to the task and potentially solve mechanics differently than intended. Right now you're completely railroaded into doing exactly what CBU3 wants you to do or your damage goes down the drain.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Failing a mechanic should either just nail you with a ridiculous amount of damage (read as: if you DO survive, it's by the skin of your teeth) or outright kill you, depending on the tier of content you're doing. None of this slap on the wrist crap.

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Mechanics killing you outright would be fine if it didn't end in the situation we currently have, where almost every other mechanic is a body check and recovery is close to impossible.

I think the game should give damage down stacks but it should still allow you to do the old tech where if you mitigate and take zero damage damage then the damage down doesn’t apply

Like in E10 if you used neutral sect, spreadlo and kitchen sinked AOE mitigation you could take zero damage from stacking wall orbs on the boss and it was considered an uptime strat because it allowed you to ignore a dodgy snapshot mechanic and give you an extra free 20 seconds of uptime if you can absorb the reduced mitigation at different points in the fight

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I vastly prefer getting vuln stacks over damage down tbh, because it allows you to take the stack on purpose if your healers are up to the task and potentially solve mechanics differently than intended. Right now you're completely railroaded into doing exactly what CBU3 wants you to do or your damage goes down the drain.

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Yup. Big agree. Once I get good at the fight, I want the option to tell the Black Mage "you can pop Manaward and keep casting, I'll throw you a shield".

CBU3's hatred for player agency is a big problem for the game's fun factor and longevity.

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Mechanics killing you outright would be fine if it didn't end in the situation we currently have, where almost every other mechanic is a body check and recovery is close to impossible.

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Don't agree. Instadeath feels horrible whether there's a bodycheck or not. The more opaque the mechanic is, the worse it feels, because you die over and over and just lie on the floor feeling frustrated until it finally downloads or, more likely, someone explains it to you.

Would much prefer more frequent mechanics with smaller individual hits but more damage overall and, and this is important, fewer free heals on the healers. Mechanic 'failure' should look like your party eating 16 extra hits in a 40-second window and the healer is out of MP and just can't keep people alive anymore so if they fail again they start dropping.

Staying alive through a couple failures, not dying instantly because you didn't telepathically intuit what the battle dev wanted you to do, allows building more muscle memory and also just feels better because you're actually playing the game.