Will Healers Still be Forced to DPS in 4.0 Due to Lax Content?

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

On the other hand, I'm far from convinced that the playstyle we have now with interwoven healing and DPS is so terrible.

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Yeah, it's not nearly perfect but I don't think it's horrible either. But all the people who complain that it's "such a bad system" can never seem to conjure up a reasonable alternative. They either say they want to heal more, or not be asked to DPS so much because they are a healer. Neither of those are solutions and they only lean towards possible healbot-ness, which I would personal despise.

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Originally Posted by LegoTechnic

sometimes a DPS knows they will not die to an AoE and so they eat it to maximize DPS uptime.

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This, I do this probably a bit too often when I play Monk. Between Second Wind and Bloodbath I know I can eat an attack or two, heck I'll even pop Mantra in dungeons so that the Regen/Shield you give me is more worth it. While not as often, do it as BLM as well with Manaward/wall. As an AST main I don't mind if a DPS takes a hit so long as they do something to make up for it (if that boss has his health plummeting then I'm more fine with someone eating avoidable damage). That said if they're constantly just taking hits I get mad and let them know they need to MOVE. At that point though they've normally caused other problems and a Vote Kick appears suddenly.

As for the main topic, I'm fine with DPSing cause I'm capable of doing so and looking at the last given numbers for AST skills, it's only going to get easier for me to do so.

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Originally Posted by Aramina

To piggyback you guys a bit: I, too, am not advocating a simple "shit hits harder" deal. I want to have to think about what I am casting, when I am casting, and on whom I am casting it.

As to whether or not it would be better or not for sub numbers? Clearly I can't answer that, none of us can, but I have always been of the mind that it is better to (potentially) overtune and have to come down a notch rather than not try at all.

Also: Gear acts as a natural nerf to content. For story dungeons low (no) difficulty is fine... but there could be actual expert dungeons (seperate from MSQ) that maybe not everyone is intended to do on day 1. Maybe they need to get some more gear to cover for any lack in skill.

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I would have loved to make even leveling feel like progression *as an option*. Just imagine: content upscaled via the addition of stats AND mechanics to meet one's gear (and maybe even composition, where jobs include particular usable gimmicks, as per the jobs brought or merely available to the queuing players if swaps are permitted in-dungeon), for any dungeon, just through automatic scaling. Rewards proportionate. At level 64 at a random leveling dungeon you could have the fun of progression-difficulty content with a team of masochistic friends for a massive clear exp bonus upon getting through. As gear increases, it doesn't get easier, but the rewards do get bigger, just short of eclipsing the next dungeon's farm status (where that massive bonus is good enough reason to get it there). That's a salient hypothetical, but still... I would so love that. *Literally grinning over the very concept.*

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Originally Posted by Lesan

It is more meant as a 'They have not a shred of a right to demand the Healer to dodge, heal AND dps.

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You say that like these are three distinct responsibilities or paradigms. They're not. Act as to complete the task as quickly as possible. A.k.a. "Be efficient." That is the only responsibility. Everything else is a de-contextualized fragment thereof.

For those who cannot yet picture the factors involved in overall efficiency: make as full and appropriate use as you can of movement, your CDs, and your GCDs.

Your DPS failing to move appropriately does not excuse you from making efficient use of your GCDs. It merely changes, slightly, what's efficient.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

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Likewise, I do see your side better. And while I don't necessarily disagree. I do have to posit the question of whether that should be the intent; if you aren't playing your job correctly you will eventually be unable to progress. Believe me when I say I know Kisa. Her obstinance would make even Gandhi want to smack her. But she's the perfect example of the game allowing bad players to progress. Granted, Antitower is what, a year old now? So perhaps it isn't the best example. That being said, I still feel the net positive outweighs the negative. Although some people would inevitably quit, it could also incentivize others to try healing whereas they once found it boring. People who have quit this game often cite how boring content is outside raids. While I do like a handful of dungeons, I can appreciate their arguments as to way given how straight forward everything is.

This is where we disagree though. When you can spend as much time as we do DPSing or standing around, I just can't say that's good design. Even in the video linked, they wiped because everyone didn't respond to mechanics. I know Pharos Sirius is brought up a lot, but people whined over Final Steps of Faith and Weeping yet this time the devs said no. They got over it. So it's not quite cut and dry how people would respond if the devs didn't nerf things.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

-Snipidisnip-

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Well, I was just explaining the design choices from the point of view of SE. Yoshi-P will never say that it's actually tuned for "bad players", but it is. That's why he's forced to say that stuff like "healers DPS isn't mandatory". It's not mandatory, but the changes of Stormblood bloody well reinforce the idea that downtime should be filled with damage GCDs. Or else they wouldn't make that easier.

Personally? I think that we'd need another kind of content entirely. Currently, dungeons allow every role to be trash, not only healers. No tank buster will kill a tank even without cooldowns. No boss have enrage mechanics or DPS checks hard enough to force DPS jobs to do a proper rotation. I mean, you can still fail on some occasions, but eventually you'll clear it (38 minutes Antitower in mind).
So, if they were to raise the skill floor in dungeons, they'd have to do it for every job, not only healers. And that might be too much of a change.

Now that we know about the Stormblood cycle of 2 dungeons/1 dungeon+new content, I hope that this "new content" will be what we are looking for.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Now that we know about the Stormblood cycle of 2 dungeons/1 dungeon+new content, I hope that this "new content" will be what we are looking for.

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We can hope. :) If there ends up being Savage dungeons or something like that I will never again complain about the ease of the normal roulette dungeons. :)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Take a look at the Mistwalker Monk healer. Apart from one minor CD, Mana Tea, its mana recovery IS melee DPS.

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Mistweaver...It's Mistweaver, not Mistwalker. This "Mana Tea" that you're talking about is actually a 50% mana reduction, as per their lvl 110 talents. It has nothing to do with damage. Spirit of the Crane is what you're referring to and that talent is there because of a specific niche that mistweavers have the option to play. This particular niche has very low healing output and not a single raider uses it. It's supposed to be used with Rising Thunder, another melee ability that interacts with Thunder Focus Tea. This is a dead spec for obvious reasons. Both talents on the same Tier as Spirit of the Crane are significantly better in any raiding scenario.

I would be totally fine if they had 2 classes of dungeons. Put all msq dungeons in one as current design and create option dungeons as difficult dungeons. You could even have 2 different roulettes for each class of dungeon.

I really wanted a system similar to mythic+ dungeons for SB

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

I really wanted a system similar to mythic+ dungeons for SB

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Oh god, yes please. As many faults as I have found with WoW (and Blizzard in general) over the years, Mythic+ is pretty perfect for people looking for a challenge without needing to fully commit to a static.

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Originally Posted by Aramina

Oh god, yes please. As many faults as I have found with WoW (and Blizzard in general) over the years, Mythic+ is pretty perfect for people looking for a challenge without needing to fully commit to a static.

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Its not all its cracked up to be. Its basically farming the easiest timed keystones and only certain classes/specs are really used. Plus 90% of the runs are rmt runs. If they do allow such dungeons it should be server only custom parties.

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Originally Posted by Vladmiere

Its not all its cracked up to be. Its basically farming the easiest timed keystones and only certain classes/specs are really used. Plus 90% of the runs are rmt runs. If they do allow such dungeons it should be server only custom parties.

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Well... of course people do that, but I was speaking of personal experience... I had absolute loads of fun seeing how high of a keystone we could push/3 chest. Healing that was a blast.

My question going forward into Stormblood is always going to be: They're removing Cleric Stance, why wouldn't you spend your GCD's throwing out dots or the odd Aoe?

I play an undergeared (just broke i200) Astrologian, I know people aren't healing 100% of the time, I can't understand how they find it entertaining casting a spell every 3 to 4 seconds...

Granted I'm not going to berate people for NOT dpsing I just can't understand the mentality...

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Originally Posted by BlastHardcheese

Granted I'm not going to berate people for NOT dpsing I just can't understand the mentality...

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I main a DPS and a tank. The majority of my play already involves being a wheeling mass of destruction blowing up and decimating everything and everyone that dares glance my way, cackling like a lunatic as blood stains the sand and gunshots ring out over the noise of battle joined.

On the rare occasions I play healer, I'm hoping for a different experience, instead of being a ranting, raving murderer, being a calm, comforting, supportive character looking out for their charges and protecting them.

Instead I get a pyrophile encouraged play style that in many ways feels even more psychotic than the actual dps classes. Is it any wonder not everyone considers healer dps blase? It's literally more of the same, only instead of gunshots it's grenades.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

On the rare occasions I play healer, I'm hoping for a different experience, instead of being a ranting, raving murderer, being a calm, comforting, supportive character looking out for their charges and protecting them.

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Snuggles the Bear confirmed as next Job. Please look forward to it.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

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Oh, fair point if it's a holiday job from the rigorous spamming of cool downs that's understandable.

Though I've always viewed helping to blow stuff up as a kind of healing, if it's dead it can't hurt anyone :P

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Originally Posted by BlastHardcheese

Oh, fair point if it's a holiday job from the rigorous spamming of cool downs that's understandable.

Though I've always viewed helping to blow stuff up as a kind of healing, if it's dead it can't hurt anyone :P

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Eh. I just want a healer that has very little or no personal dps, but lots of support for it's party members, of some kind. That would be infinitely more fun than any other healer job currently in game.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Eh. I just want a healer that has very little or no personal dps, but lots of support for it's party members, of some kind. That would be infinitely more fun than any other healer job currently in game.

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Only way that's happening is by nerfing the hell out of the heal potencies.

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Originally Posted by BlastHardcheese

My question going forward into Stormblood is always going to be: They're removing Cleric Stance, why wouldn't you spend your GCD's throwing out dots or the odd Aoe?

I play an undergeared (just broke i200) Astrologian, I know people aren't healing 100% of the time, I can't understand how they find it entertaining casting a spell every 3 to 4 seconds...

Granted I'm not going to berate people for NOT dpsing I just can't understand the mentality...

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There can be a few reasons. For some people it can be...I guess either stressful or unfun to watch both your party's health and the mob's health. But there can also be physical limitations to it too. Someone I know in game has use of only one hand. I'm not going to expect them to be super fast on target switching and juggling healing and DPS, since I know that even playing DPS can be hard for them. I didn't used to know that and just thought they were bad at the game. When I learned that it was kind of eye-opening so now I try not to just assume that every person that makes a lot of mistakes is just an idiot.

I'm sure the amount of people playing with physical limitations is small, but having played with that person, as well as the elderly and others with physical issues, I would just rather not make assumptions. Healer DPS never seemed to shave off too much time anyways.

No us healers aren't. Yoshida already expressed and said to Mr Happy1227 "stress this to your viewers. I do NOT expect healers to dps"..

Forced? The game does not "force" you to DPS. Your fellow players "expect" you to DPS if you are not a newbie or are super nervous case. I have seen a few super nervous healers that don't DPS out of plain fear of letting somebody die. It happens.

Any and all iterations of "I do what I want, you don't pay my sub" are rendered invalid when other real life people are doing content in the same party as you. If you were to pull this crud with me or the members of my FC, you will be asked to DPS on downtime. If you retort with the usual selfish garbo, you might get kicked. Consider your fellow player, we all stand equal to the games shenanigans and if a great deal of us can throw in some damage while healing, so can you.

Any iteration of "I am a healer, so I only heal" is self restricting, cowardly and weak as the people who MADE THE GAME would want you to make use of all the abilities in your disposal for a grand, fun time. If you do not use them all, you are cutting off bits of yourself. If you think that a mere role warrants ignoring the DPS abilities consider using a different job, one which you are actually willing to use all the abilities at its disposal.

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Originally Posted by Marcu18

No us healers aren't. Yoshida already expressed and said to Mr Happy1227 "stress this to your viewers. I do NOT expect healers to dps"..

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With due respect to Yoshi-P, his opinion on the topic is A) politically correct and B) irrelevant to gameplay.

He is going to support the position that promotes the least division in the player base, which in this case happens to be "do what you want."

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Originally Posted by Marcu18

No us healers aren't. Yoshida already expressed and said to Mr Happy1227 "stress this to your viewers. I do NOT expect healers to dps"..

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And in another interview, he said that they were making it easier to DPS in Stormblood and that people should give it a try.

So stop twisting his words to fit for your lazyness. "Healers aren't expected to DPS" means that the content should be doable without healer DPS. That's all. It's not a free pass at being a terrible person for leeching on the efforts of your teammates.

Jeez people, stop trying to find excuses.

I dps so not really issue for me I took it as when doing Savage it helps meet dps checks easier and if you dps in casual content also all it does it save a few minutes in the dungeon and if it doesn't you have another issue..

Let's say, a healer don't want to do dps.

From that point, I acknowlege the fact that you don't want to spend your GCD to do it. Okay, so be it.
I however will never forgive one thing for scholars.

Shadow Flare.
It's a oGCD at free cost and instant use.
Not using it at all wouldn't be a question of playstyle anymore. It would just be totally be a ridicilous choice.

You can even make a macro : /ac Shadow Flare <t> so that it immediatly goes on the target. One pressure on this, and it's done.
Even if you don't want to dps, you have no reason to not use that skill.

It would be like Assize and Earthly star that would do damage even if you don't want to since now damges scale on mind.

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Originally Posted by Marcu18

No us healers aren't. Yoshida already expressed and said to Mr Happy1227 "stress this to your viewers. I do NOT expect healers to dps"..

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Quote the full answer please. Cause I hate when people only take the part that goes in their way by ignoring the rest.
Yoshida did said that indeed, but he never ever said "don't dare touching any dps skill".

=)

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Originally Posted by Cyrocco

Only way that's happening is by nerfing the hell out of the heal potencies.

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Oh it's dooable, just they would need to gut the job's personal DPS rather than it's heal potencies. AST would have been perfect for this if they had have had the guts to make it to spend GCDs optimising it's card throughput instead of throwing dots/nukes.

The tricky part is of course keeping it's damage enough to be viable whilst solo, but without being overwhelming in 8 man. I made a lengthy breakdown discussing how this could be achieved a year or so ago if you feel like searching.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

Quote the full answer please. Cause I hate when people only take the part that goes in their way by ignoring the rest.
Yoshida did said that indeed, but he never ever said "don't dare touching any dps skill".

=)

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Uh what are you talking about. Of course he didn't say that. He didn't say a lot of things. He didn't say that the sky is blue, or he prefers pizza over chicken.

The exact quote Mr Happy got was "That being said, and I want to really enforce this to your viewers, I firmly believe it shouldn't be mandatory and we do NOT have the expectation of them to DPS."

So yeah, you're right, he didn't say "don't dare touching any dps skill."

But what he quoted was more than enough of the answer to get the whole point across. He didn't bend the quote around to make it work out for him at all. I hate it too when people do that, but that isn't the case here, sorry.

Thanks xNewbx.

I will point out that he started publicly saying this shortly before patch 3.05 (...3.07?). That would be the patch that gave us A4S. ...which was actually impossible at available gear level without healer DPS. As in, 4 DPS + 2 tanks holding aggro could not physically put out enough damage to kill it before the enrage. What Yoshi-P says and what the balance team actually does don't seem to be all that related.

There is no reason NOT to dps anymore, even if that means just throwing up a few dots. No more Cleric's Stance = no more excuses.

Some healers may not feel comfortable dpsing and healing. If you stuggling with dps checks, put the duty on hold till everyone can get 4 or more ilevel higher than they currently are. True this doesn't work ALL the time but most. Just ask your healer(s) are u comfortable or would u like to dips if need be. We CAN help with dps but that's not our #1 responsibility. The team's survival and revival if necessary is our #1 responsiblity.

I think it's easier to DPS now now that we don't have to stance dance. The least we can do it apply a dot or something, especially if healing isn't a huge concern (ie levelling roulette).

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Originally Posted by Marcu18

Some healers may not feel comfortable dpsing and healing. If you stuggling with dps checks, put the duty on hold till everyone can get 4 or more ilevel higher than they currently are. True this doesn't work ALL the time but most. Just ask your healer(s) are u comfortable or would u like to dips if need be. We CAN help with dps but that's not our #1 responsibility. The team's survival and revival if necessary is our #1 responsiblity.

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Everyone's #1 responsibility is clearing the duty, by any means necessary. If healer DPS would mean getting a clear then you should help out like that. If your only excuse is "I'm not comfortable," then you're literally being a liability to the party. Casual content where "I'm not comfortable" is an acceptable excuse will never need healer DPS, so if you're raiding and holding your party back like this you should probably get replaced.

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Originally Posted by Marcu18

Some healers may not feel comfortable dpsing and healing. If you stuggling with dps checks, put the duty on hold till everyone can get 4 or more ilevel higher than they currently are. True this doesn't work ALL the time but most. Just ask your healer(s) are u comfortable or would u like to dips if need be. We CAN help with dps but that's not our #1 responsibility. The team's survival and revival if necessary is our #1 responsiblity.

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Ofcourse your first concern should be keeping everyone alive. There will be downtime in between where you'll be picking your nose or DPS'ing before healing is required again. DPS'ing >>> nose picking.

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Originally Posted by Marcu18

Some healers may not feel comfortable dpsing and healing. If you stuggling with dps checks, put the duty on hold till everyone can get 4 or more ilevel higher than they currently are. True this doesn't work ALL the time but most. Just ask your healer(s) are u comfortable or would u like to dips if need be. We CAN help with dps but that's not our #1 responsibility. The team's survival and revival if necessary is our #1 responsiblity.

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I don't understand how a healer could be uncomfortable DPSing. I'm not trying to poke fun here, honestly asking. There are certainly times when a tank pulls like an insane monkey and he needs constant attention or people are failing mechanics in a boss fight and it's all you can do to keep them vertical but from your message I don't get the vibe you're talking about specifically those scenarios.

Again, not trying to be rude, but if you're using every GCD for legitimate healing then there may be something bigger wrong here and if you're not using the vast majority of your GCD's for something... Why not DPS and help out?

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

I don't understand how a healer could be uncomfortable DPSing. I'm not trying to poke fun here, honestly asking.

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Same here. I'm relatively new to FFXIV and this "healer dps" debate is the most baffling aspect of the game. Why are there at least a couple threads on this topic constantly near the top? (Don't say because idiots like me keep bumping them.)

Genuinely curious why this debate even exists. Obviously, I'm used to forum threads about "healers in pugs suck" or "dps in pugs suck" or "everybody that isn't me sucks and is holding back my progress", but why this singular focus on healer damage?

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Originally Posted by Fortune_Cookie

Same here. I'm relatively new to FFXIV and this "healer dps" debate is the most baffling aspect of the game. Why are there at least a couple threads on this topic constantly near the top? (Don't say because idiots like me keep bumping them.)

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There are mainly two reasons, generally overlapping: 1) the general simplicity of the role in casual content and the extremely low healing requirements attracted a lot of unskilled players, especially in the hw era when a lot of dps jobs became very complicated, and said players erroneuosly thought they were good because they could keep the party alive, thus "fulfilling their role", by pressing one button every 20 seconds or mindlessly spamming heals; 2) some sort of distorted mentality about "I'm a healer, my job has a green icon, I'm good at healing, I don't want to do other stuff". In other words, giving more importance to what they think a healer should be instead of giving priority to efficiency.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

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Thanks for the response! That makes some sense - I can see that a low healing requirement naturally brings healer dps contribution into focus. Still, there must be something about the df system in this game that causes people to obsess over the concept of "role", rather than look at their job's toolkit to see what they bring to a party.

Ideally the answer is simple. A healer's role is to keep the party alive, and that's the bare minimum. Once this is assured, it's a measure of how good the player is in how they fill their down time. For new content it is perfectly expected to play conservatively, but as one becomes more comfortable with the content then utilizing your healer toolkit to damage while healing proactively is simply what an active player should be doing, because it remains being active. In addition to fulfilling the primary role, the desire to utilize the class's move list to the best of their ability is part of what determines a "good" player from a "bad".

This isn't specific to healers, either. A tank in new content or unfamiliar with the party may choose to keep tank stance on and overspam aggro generation as a safety measure, and DPS may forgo optimal rotation focus in order to keep aware of new mechanics. A proc may go unanswered or cooldowns saved in preparation for abilities, and as experience is gained a good tank/DPS will begin to better leverage their toolkits as they learn what's coming, optimizing the amount of damage and control they can do within a fight. A bad tank/DPS will just lazily repeat the most basic variation of their role without ever seeking to improve, doing the bare minimum to scrape by without putting in the effort to perform. Sure, they're still controlling mobs and doing damage, but their performance is a far cry from an active player legitimately practicing their class, though this has admittedly diminished a little since the complexity of HW was reduced, though interestingly with DPS being given damage reduction moves their ability to perform this action may color a similar role debate.

Obviously there are different levels of experience in the playerbase and repeated practice is the most important method of growth in the game, but in this particular situation it just so happens that one of the ways a healer in particular sets themself apart is how they deal with "downtime", and the tools they have for that are DPS-oriented. Thus similar to a tank who optimizes his available cooldowns versus one that just spams aggro gen and calls it a day, there are healers who will set up active healing buffers and throw in some DPS versus those who will just heal. As always, it is fine to perform the minimum when you're learning until you're comfortable with the class mechanics, but it's a sign of a good player to work towards doing your best, and a lazy player to not.