The idea that we need to DPS must go.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I refuse to believe that a stat that starts out at a third the value of other core stats actually brings significant value to anything.

Frankly, It's less about the numbers and more about the mentality which ends up making bad healers out of people. This wasn't an honest mistake. (You don't accidentally pentameld DH in a bunch of pieces of gear.) This was done with intent and it was apparent through the whole run of the dungeon. As the title of this thread suggests, the idea that healers need to DPS needs to go. Everything goes smoother when you have someone that's actually focused on helping maintain the people that actually bring the DPS.

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The healer was just bad. Their melds have nothing to do with it

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

DH healers are really messing things up out there. I just ran into yet another example that couldn't keep all group members over 50% in a simple dungeon, so when we got double room wides on a boss, only the tank was left. If people really want to DPS that bad, play a proper DPS class. Healers are there to heal, not try to milk a stat that's already so low and do next to nothing helpful for the group.

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The truth is you had a bad healer in your party.
You don't need to meld Materia at all to finish every piece of content that isn't savage or ultimate so them melding DH is completely irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

The truth is you had a bad healer in your party.
You don't need to meld Materia at all to finish every piece of content that isn't savage or ultimate so them melding DH is completely irrelevant.

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If they are synced down tis disabled anyway so irrelevant. Brings great feist to see direct hit being shamed again because it can be most useful even when not in high level content (undersized, over world, etc).

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I refuse to believe that a stat that starts out at a third the value of other core stats actually brings significant value to anything.

Frankly, It's less about the numbers and more about the mentality which ends up making bad healers out of people. This wasn't an honest mistake. (You don't accidentally pentameld DH in a bunch of pieces of gear.) This was done with intent and it was apparent through the whole run of the dungeon. As the title of this thread suggests, the idea that healers need to DPS needs to go. Everything goes smoother when you have someone that's actually focused on helping maintain the people that actually bring the DPS.

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You can believe what you want, there is actual math for it.
You just admitted that you have no idea how it works but blamed it anyway.

What you got is a healer making a mistake not by melding DH but by not using enough oGCDs or even GCDs to keep you alive.
And if you were synced, melds don't make any difference at all because syncing removes all materia effects.
Before you blindly blame something, at least do some research.

I repeat: you had one bad experience, one bad healer. That's it. Get over it, move on with your life and don't try to destroy a whole role even more just because you can't handle getting the occasional bad egg.
Nobody here demands tanks only have 1-2 combo so they can focus on mitigation but I guarantee that everyone had plenty of bad experiences with tanks, causing them to die/ wipe/ waste a lot of time. It's not the fault of a proper dps rotation that some tanks don't mitigate, it's because the player is bad and has a lot of room for improvement.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

DH. Direct Hit Rate. The stat healers and tanks lack. Why are healers melding for a stat that starts off as low as it does and ultimately making it harder for themselves to keep a group running through basic mechanics? There's no practical reason melding this, even in harder content. Bumping determination means heals and nukes are stronger and you ultimately get to heal for more with fewer casts and DPS til your heart's content.

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Funnily enough, even if they meld 100% determination or even piety, those dps spells are still going to be the button they use 90% of time. If they misjudge, you, their party member—will still die. Do your own experiment: meld every possible slot with determination materia and see how much healing it boosts. One thing I am sure of: you will be disappointed.

Not even all those melds will reduce the amount of healing actions you need to throw out to heal people up by significant margin. So why bother increasing the 10% while you can gain more return by investing on the actual thing you do most of time; the 90% pressing dps button?

The fact that you mentioned ”there’s no practical reason” shows that you’ve never seen the actual calculation behind these stats yet choose to believe the vague tooltip description that the game given to the player without actually seeing the effect in real practice.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

Holy is only effective for 3 casts, then your tank is stuck not being able to stun certain actions. If you're failing a DPS check in EX / Savage, the problem is definitely not solved by forsaking a prime stat like Det in order to pentameld DH. Did you ever consider the fact that Healer nukes are as strong as they are because they have to heal as well? It's clearly in there as a supplement and a way to get through solo content.

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Give me an example of things tanks want to stun that isn't something you can use interject on. I can't think of any trash pulls worth holding holy on at all.

Someone does not understand concept of the diminishing returns at'all me thinks.

Know what else they do not understand? The importance of gcd uptime! Rocking that sweet seventh percentile on normal mode Phoinix with total gcd uptime of 52%. Nice!

Convenient that forbidden website when some troglodyte decides to go on tirade about nonsense about some experience they had in one dungeon. That same someone wishes to inflict their play style on others by forcing us to adapt to yee ol thumb up the posterior while we wait for the next health bar to promptly top off.

You kinda know someone has completely lost the plot when they believe stunning one mob > eight fricken seconds of free invuln and a pack of mobs that is now dead faster so you are no longer taking damage.

Determination is not prime healer stat for melds, it varies between healer jobs by the twelve! Tis closer to Crit > Sps (unless white mage) > direct hit > determination. You can swap direct hit or determination depending on situation or healer of choice much like the spell speed. Mmhmm because let me tell you, when I dump a whole load of 900 potency Pneuma into the party what am really thinking is; "Boy oh boy do I wish this hit just a little harder!" Not as if I am sitting on Holos, Ixochole, Panhaima, and Physis all ogcd or multiple 10% mitigations. You can even gasp move Kardia around so you can heal other party members while still dealing damage. Perhaps even slap Soteria if are feeling the spicy.

Go home Vulnstackulius, just be careful not to bump into anything on your way. With that many stacks you are likely one shot away from becoming floor decoration.

Poor Excalibur, I only chose you because of the name but it seems you are infected..

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Originally Posted by Verlane

Give me an example of things tanks want to stun that isn't something you can use interject on. I can't think of any trash pulls worth holding holy on at all.

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...Okay it's NOT really worth holding against them but the only thing that springs to mind are Bees/Wasp style enemies. The type of enemy that doesn't run up and use their best attack at first but waits just a bit. Two-three Holys would make them immune to stuns and let them fire off that baby tank buster they have which CAN be pretty noticeable depending on the level and gear.

That said, I can only maybe think of 3 dungeons that actually feature the enemy type and I can't think of another enemy model that has a delayed heavy hit like that. Nor have I played Qarn, Saint Mocianne or Neverreap in.... a very long time. SO I can't recall if you can Interject those. And by this point, 2 are old dungeons you don't need, Qarn might be required still but is so early you're NOT going to have Holy anyway. And even then that would require the target to.... live through 3 holys along with two DPS worth of AoE going off, and maybe a tank hitting them. THEN Live long enough to fire it off.

Is it a GOOD example? No but it's the only thing I can think of where withholding a Holy could even be thought of at all.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I refuse to believe that a stat that starts out at a third the value of other core stats actually brings significant value to anything.

Frankly, It's less about the numbers and more about the mentality which ends up making bad healers out of people. This wasn't an honest mistake. (You don't accidentally pentameld DH in a bunch of pieces of gear.) This was done with intent and it was apparent through the whole run of the dungeon. As the title of this thread suggests, the idea that healers need to DPS needs to go. Everything goes smoother when you have someone that's actually focused on helping maintain the people that actually bring the DPS.

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Are you going to be shocked if I tell you spell speed is the best stat at the moment in the first savage raid tier you can have ?

Like we talk about 2.09 gcd plus double weaving under lightspeed. So that’s 0.59 seconds error margin because a ogcd locks you out of the gcd by 0.75 and that times two cause astro is almost heavy. You could actually learn piano and not get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and learn something to impress people or you play astro.

And here comes the kicker sch goes for a 2.32 gcd gear set as bis. Whm can’t because you run out of mana in like 2 minutes and sage takes 2.45 gcd.

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Originally Posted by Verlane

Give me an example of things tanks want to stun that isn't something you can use interject on. I can't think of any trash pulls worth holding holy on at all.

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Twinning comes to mind if there's a situation I'd rather WHM hold their Holy for some few seconds as a tank.

There are 2 Reptoid in a pack of mobs before the 2nd boss. They will cast Berserk and grant themselves Physical Damage Up for like 18 seconds. They hit very hard with that buff.

It can be interjected, but they will recast it again before Interject comes back up. Normally, I would stun 1 Reptoid and Interject the other to prevent them from getting the buff completely, but it's not possible with WHM. (don't expect ranged DPS help with interject because dps being dps)

However, it's not that it's impossible to heal through though. It just requires some extra work from healers. Experienced WHM won't drop the tank because of that.

Both examples benefit much more from simply spamming Holy until kingdom come.
The wasps/ bees don't cast their Final Sting until they're about to die, which means that even regular aoe is often enough to kill them before the cast goes through but quickly doing a single target skill on them works just as fine.
Holding a potent aoe until they cast it to then stun them is a gigantic loss over aoeing as usual and simply doing 1-2 single target skills when they're about to die.
And as for Twinning mobs: they hit harder but the wall to wall was easy enough to heal without anyone stunning/ interrupting at all when they came out.
Did the tank need some extra healing if both had their buff up? Yes.
Was it worth holding Holy to interrupt instead? Absolutely not, not in this universe and not in any other either.
In most parties I've been in when those dungeons came out, neither the tank nor phys ranged stunned/ interrupted either cast. It wasn't designed to need that, it's simply a little bonus if it does happen.
All three healers could heal through it just fine unless the tank also didn't use mitigation. Then it got spicy. Also, in worst case invulns exist... unless you're DRK, of course c:
So both examples are not examples of it being beneficion, only of "it theoretically could be used later but it's not a good choice... you could, but please don't".

A healers job is to dps and keep the party alive while doing so, you got the wrong idea about healers.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I refuse to believe that a stat that starts out at a third the value of other core stats actually brings significant value to anything.

Frankly, It's less about the numbers and more about the mentality which ends up making bad healers out of people. This wasn't an honest mistake. (You don't accidentally pentameld DH in a bunch of pieces of gear.) This was done with intent and it was apparent through the whole run of the dungeon. As the title of this thread suggests, the idea that healers need to DPS needs to go. Everything goes smoother when you have someone that's actually focused on helping maintain the people that actually bring the DPS.

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The whole reason Direct Hit has higher DPS value is because healers and tanks have zero access to it otherwise. While the remaining stats are subject to diminishing returns save Critical Hit due to its lopsided scaling.

With that said, the difference is minuscule. Hence why tanks don't bother melding Tenacity nor does it make a significant difference if healers opt for Determine over Direct Hit. To highlight this even further, the World First racers clear the initial two Savage falls in gear 10 whole ilvls below the actually min requirement. That's a far greater loss of stats—in particular, main stats—than Direct Hit could ever hope to compete against. In any content below Savage, it's entirely a non-issue. Most players don't even bother to meld whatsoever. If someone dies due to lackluster healing, it's simply a mistimed oGCD or a healer simply not healing to begin with. Direct Hit has absolutely nothing to do with it.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

Both examples benefit much more from simply spamming Holy until kingdom come.
The wasps/ bees don't cast their Final Sting until they're about to die, which means that even regular aoe is often enough to kill them before the cast goes through but quickly doing a single target skill on them works just as fine.
Holding a potent aoe until they cast it to then stun them is a gigantic loss over aoeing as usual and simply doing 1-2 single target skills when they're about to die.
And as for Twinning mobs: they hit harder but the wall to wall was easy enough to heal without anyone stunning/ interrupting at all when they came out.
Did the tank need some extra healing if both had their buff up? Yes.
Was it worth holding Holy to interrupt instead? Absolutely not, not in this universe and not in any other either.
In most parties I've been in when those dungeons came out, neither the tank nor phys ranged stunned/ interrupted either cast. It wasn't designed to need that, it's simply a little bonus if it does happen.
All three healers could heal through it just fine unless the tank also didn't use mitigation. Then it got spicy. Also, in worst case invulns exist... unless you're DRK, of course c:
So both examples are not examples of it being beneficion, only of "it theoretically could be used later but it's not a good choice... you could, but please don't".

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I did admit I haven't seen the bees in awhile and at the same time it's like "...why would I do this very weird thing that seems pointless".

And if the example that one poster whining about Holy spam is so... narrowly obtuse, why bother in the first place? I just tried to think of one example for the exercise of it and even I realized half way it was "Wait what no this is actually pointless". But it was the ONLY thing I could think of so I went with it.

Only reason not to Holy Spam is probably due to other factors, usually involving what's going on in the party than any actual mechanics or design choices.

That wasn't meant to come across as showing someone up or even as an attack and I apologise if it did. I just wanted to make clear that even if there are cases when you could theoretically hold Holy for stunning at specific times it was never good practice, let alone mandatory.
Not in the past, when many things worked a bit differently and even less so now that you can simply faceroll through dungeons by burning everything down.

It's as you said: the only reason for a WHM to not use Holy is people needing healing that oGCDs won't cut or mechanics forcing them to move out of melee range.
Although I've seen more players simply eating an aoe in trash pulls to keep casting if it doesn't give a damage down, paralysis or silence.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

That wasn't meant to come across as showing someone up or even as an attack and I apologise if it did. I just wanted to make clear that even if there are cases when you could theoretically hold Holy for stunning at specific times it was never good practice, let alone mandatory.
Not in the past, when many things worked a bit differently and even less so now that you can simply faceroll through dungeons by burning everything down.

It's as you said: the only reason for a WHM to not use Holy is people needing healing that oGCDs won't cut or mechanics forcing them to move out of melee range.
Although I've seen more players simply eating an aoe in trash pulls to keep casting if it doesn't give a damage down, paralysis or silence.

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I was trying to humor the idea of "Hmm IS there a reason to hold it?" And... no. Not even with all the backflipping I had to do to come up with a reason to so.

Back on main topic; if the idea of damage from Healers is to...go, and we just get stripped down to the bare minimum(Hmmm how much MORE can we lose?), how are we to level? On a whim, I tried leveling WHM in some fates and it was just.... boring. Like so boring. Let me be clear, fates isn't the most engaging of content but WOW it was threatening to make me just turn the game off. And these days I can't picture trying to go through Story with this kit.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

how much MORE can we lose?

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Delete nuke button, our sole damage ability is a Dot that ticks for 400 potency per tick.
Now we have all the time in the world to GCD heal without punishing our DPS!
Don't worry i already hit myself for typing that...

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

Delete nuke button, our sole damage ability is a Dot that ticks for 400 potency per tick.
Now we have all the time in the world to GCD heal without punishing our DPS!
Don't worry i already hit myself for typing that...

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Don’t give them ideas.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

Don’t give them ideas.

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Dont worry, nobody reads these healer forums. Healer feedback & suggestions get ignored constantly by the dev team, no matter if good or bad.

its still a bad idea to do so on the off chance one of them misclicks onto here

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

its still a bad idea to do so on the off chance one of them misclicks onto here

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Not really. I just picture they’d have that one reaction Patrick Star had in Spongebob.

“Who are you people?!?!?”

No. I veto this thread in its entirety.

I mained SCH since SB because I like the idea of a "battle medic". SCH slowly started turning away from that playstyle once they gutted our DPS kit.

I have since changed to SGE because it truly embodies what I wanted in a healer: damage to heal, and heal to damage!

What I mean by that is, I love the design that you need to have broken shields to gain Addersting charges which you can use to DPS. That's cool. You can also place Kardion on whoever will be taking the most consistent damage and it applies a percentage of your damage as healing to that person. That is what I wanted in a battle medic class. I love it.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I refuse to believe that a stat that starts out at a third the value of other core stats actually brings significant value to anything.

Frankly, It's less about the numbers and more about the mentality which ends up making bad healers out of people. This wasn't an honest mistake. (You don't accidentally pentameld DH in a bunch of pieces of gear.) This was done with intent and it was apparent through the whole run of the dungeon. As the title of this thread suggests, the idea that healers need to DPS needs to go. Everything goes smoother when you have someone that's actually focused on helping maintain the people that actually bring the DPS.

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You had a healer that was doing things wrong, sure. There can be a plethora of reasons why, but if at the end of the day they couldn't keep people's health above 50% when there were raid wides that took more than 50% of their health then maybe it wasn't a simple mistake, especially if this was persistent. I sincerely doubt their melding choice affected it. But my thought on it is, so what? It's the dice you roll when you use Duty Finder or PUG, players who struggle to play well is nothing new to the MMORPG genre or exclusive to healing.

In my experience there's also a lot of tanks and DPS who don't do very well either and often or not I pick up their slack. I've never once thought "they need to dumb down elements of their jobs to make it easy", because if we start doing that, it's just a recipe for blandless...I say that, the devs have already started doing that. But I've never asked for any DPS jobs to be watered down so they can meet DPS checks and do mechanics better, nor have I have ask tanks to be watered down to make survival easier, DPS easier or holding aggro easier (but they did it anyway). Why? Because it'd make for a bland gameplay experience. The complaint if anything is the player is getting it wrong. I think a fun game where some people get it wrong is better than a bland game where everybody gets it right.

With the player getting stuff wrong, there's of course room for acceptance, people can get things wrong, they can make mistakes, they can be inexperienced, they can have the wrong attitude, they can be misinformed, they can have a certain handicap affecting them and so on. You're not always going to get it and it's the luck of the draw.

To my mind a better way of mitigating that is providing better tools for learning. Back when I started the natural progression of levelling and progressing through story sufficed, because from level 1 to 50, it was a steady progression of difficulty and a gradual acquisition of abilities to get used to and content that steadily increased in difficulty and threw in DPS, healer and tank checks. Each of the 3 primals themselves had their own separate checks, with Ifrit having a DPS check, Titan having a healer check and Garuda having a tank check, this much was also true of the Hard Modes. I've been around long enough to remember Tanks LBing on Garuda NM and Mage LB3 being almost essential to Ifrit HM. Nowadays all that content is a joke and doesn't provide that benefit and you'll have people get one job to 90 and then maybe jump potion the next or pick up something like SGE at level 70.

However, I think something like a "Hall of the Apprentice" and a "Training Journal" as an extension of the "Hall of the Novice" is something that could help. Attach a reward at the end too for incentive. The "Hall of the Apprentice" could be where people get more intermediate and advanced lessons on their role and it could the place where healers can learn to prioritise healing over DPS and it could be where the devs promote the idea that DPS is secondary and optional but there if it's needed. It could also help with basic rotations for DPS and sustaining uptime during mechanics and it could also help with tanks managing their cooldowns and ensuring they sustain aggro on all enemies including new ones that show. The "Training Journal" would be a list of dungeons & trials (in a certain order) they can complete where they might be useful practice for certain things covered by Hall of the Apprentice. And if anything, it'd be more rewarding.

I looked up OP on lodestone and he doesn't even play the game anymore his highest level is 80 white mage

Right now in raid and dingeons it's "spam your 1 button, weaving some ogcd mits or heals when needed".
We need either a more engaging dps rotations or a more intensive healing.

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Originally Posted by Neihel

I looked up OP on lodestone and he doesn't even play the game anymore his highest level is 80 white mage

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Well the OP originally started this thread 3 years ago, so it's not really shocking that they've not leveled to 90.

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Originally Posted by Kirundo

Right now in raid and dingeons it's "spam your 1 button, weaving some gcd mits or heals when needed".
We need either a more engaging dps rotations or a more intensive healing.

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Healing/Tanking mob pulls in dungeons have generally been fun imo, especially with Sage, while many DPS jobs tend to have slightly less interesting rotations for those.

Healing bosses is where it gets less fun since there's a lot more downtime and outside some oGCDs and Sage's Phlegma it usually devolves into you spamming your single target dps skill while refreshing your DoT every now and then, and EW's further amplified that by making Tank self-heals as good as they are now.

That isn't to say Tanks shouldn't be as good at self-heals, but more that we have some room for an actual dps rotation now

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Well the OP originally started this thread 3 years ago, so it's not really shocking that they've not leveled to 90.

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Even if that's the case, I'm playing WHM at 80, trying to get it up and I just.... nooooooope.

And I'm not even an uber high end healer. If I can point out the problem, there's something wrong.

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Originally Posted by Kirundo

Right now in raid and dingeons it's "spam your 1 button, weaving some gcd mits or heals when needed".
We need either a more engaging dps rotations or a more intensive healing.

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I doubt they'll give these to us, very unlikely. Especially when they've made their intent to dumb down both sides of spectrum very clear.

At best they'll think bumping up or down potencies slightly is all they need to magically 'fix' that.

This endgame is the same over and over again.... It constantly demands more and even more to meet numbers and "performance".

This is how a role in a role-playing game is trampled underfoot.
It's the same nonsense everywhere. You choose a role and then you are no longer happy with it, because the principle of perfection of a competitive game requires you to go the extra mile.
So you are no longer a healer at some point, but a DD who is also supposed to heal.
That's what all this nonsense boils down to.

In an RPG, I pick a role and want to be exactly that. And if I play a healer, then I am a healer and don't want to and shouldn't do damage. And if the fight is serene and I have time to look at more than the HP bars of my comrades, then I enjoy the fact that it goes well.

No scream the virtual competitive players of a spreadsheet game.... If you don't need to heal for 10 seconds, then do damage, help with the pro... uh increase the DPS so that we also get everything out of it...

We are enslaved by a stupid system in an RPG that makes a nonsense of everything around it that once made these games. And for what exactly?

No, the MMORPG/aRPG genre is running into a dead end. Please finally separate like PvP and PvE also this sport part from the games. Stop adding solo quest tunnels in turbo to these games and let's resurrect the MMORPG together with all its great possibilities and content.
Give the players who really only want to play a virtual sports game their playground, or make it a genre of its own.... This also saves a lot of costs, because basically these players don't like a path as a goal anyway. They just need a little arena with bosses, loot and mechanics and of course the spreadsheet that goes along with it.

RPGers, however, want to play a game, and not transfer, from the movie Lord of the Rings just chew through the last minute of the final battle over and over again. They want to see the whole movie and love the journey and all the things that make up such a game.

The Endgame in all honor, but as it is currently represented in this genre, it is simply a huge juggernaut that has decomposed everything and after which everything is aligned.... That's really terrible to watch and the com has also developed absolutely detrimental in all the time, because of this principle.


And even though I may sound like a bad-tempered curmudgeon, in truth I just love the RPG and defend the true values of this genre here. I am the friend of every real MMORPGler...

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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Originally Posted by localman

Snip

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Yeah, thats alot of words to say that you feel entitled to afk for extended periods of time in encounters because of "muh immersion". Every combat focussed game ever can be boiled down to your avatar/group/units being supposed to decrease the life points of your opposition to 0, which is done through damage. So damage in every single combat focussed game ever is basically the most efficent action you can commit to, as long as you can afford to do it without your avatar/group/units dying. Healing by the nature of it is purely reactive and will always be reactive and limited in its use, because there is always only so much damage you can heal without wasting time or ressources. Even in the original Final Fantasy, healers would dps if there is nothing to heal because anything else would be just the waste of a turn. Their dps options were just limited to physical attacks up until you get holy, which usually is a late level spell. But from that point on, yeah, Healers would dps as much as possible.

And actually, you are kind of wrong. Like, objectively, when it comes to the MMO-Genre. What you are describing is the oldschool way of MMO design and it was never that popular. In actuality, the MMO-Genre only blew up in popularity back when World of Warcraft introduced changes like actually allowing players to be able to reach max level through solo quests alone and having a high focus on challenging high end group content. Your vision of the MMO-Genre was just never that popular and by shticking to it, the genre itself would have remained a niche one indefinitely. FF14 followed the bad new trends set by World of Warcraft compared to the more oldschool formate of FF11 which focussed on a long, extended and group-focussed leveling grind over challenging endgame content and guess what, its more popular than FF11 was at its best day.

Also, what else is there to implement but gameplay content? Like, what do you expect, that SE just dedicates patches to introduce new leveling dungeons?

Next time I play Baldur's Gate, maybe I'll revisit the cleric class. I've definitely played it wrong in the past. For the most immersive roleplay experience I'll recruit up a party of 5 NPCs, then have my character stand in the back during battle. When it comes time to issue my main character commands, I'll look at everyone's health bar. If they're all full, I'll RP my character screaming "HEALERS SHOULD HEAL ONLY", then imagine the rest of the party coming to the conclusion that the Bhaalspawn is a crazy person.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Next time I play Baldur's Gate, maybe I'll revisit the cleric class. I've definitely played it wrong in the past. For the most immersive roleplay experience I'll recruit up a party of 5 NPCs, then have my character stand in the back during battle. When it comes time to issue my main character commands, I'll look at everyone's health bar. If they're all full, I'll RP my character screaming "HEALERS SHOULD HEAL ONLY", then imagine the rest of the party coming to the conclusion that the Bhaalspawn is a crazy person.

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I really don't understand where this "healers ONLY heal" mindset even comes from. The only game I can even think of that actually has healers function like that is Everquest, but like, every other RPG I've ever seen had support characters flex between offense and defense.
- Literally every Final Fantasy
- Every Persona
- Pokemon (Chansey almost always carries Seismic Toss)
- Fire Emblem, many priests begin only being able to use staves but promote to using offensive magic.
- WoW
- Dofus/Wakfu
- Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Every Dragon Quest
- Every Star Ocean
- Every .Hack
- Every Tales of (In the earlier games, you typically do have 1 main healer who is mostly busy managing HP, but they also weave in offensive spells).
- Every Xenoblade and Xenosaga

Like seriously... what RPGs have characters that only ever heal throughout the entire game?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I really don't understand where this "healers ONLY heal" mindset even comes from. The only game I can even think of that actually has healers function like that is Everquest, but like, every other RPG I've ever seen had support characters flex between offense and defense.
- Literally every Final Fantasy
- Every Persona
- Pokemon (Chansey almost always carries Seismic Toss)
- Fire Emblem, many priests begin only being able to use staves but promote to using offensive magic.
- WoW
- Dofus/Wakfu
- Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Every Dragon Quest
- Every Star Ocean
- Every .Hack
- Every Tales of (In the earlier games, you typically do have 1 main healer who is mostly busy managing HP, but they also weave in offensive spells).
- Every Xenoblade and Xenosaga

Like seriously... what RPGs have characters that only ever heal throughout the entire game?

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It probably comes from early MMOs, especially WoW, when mana was still a scarce ressource artificially enforcing using lower ranked heals to preserve it and periods of passivity and not casting anything to regenerate it, combined with a lower level of skill the average player would have, due to this particular style of tab target MMO being still fairly new to mass audiences. There is also more constant chip damage incoming in WoW, which allows for heal spaming and the illusion of looking busy, though this already has changed in higher levels of play and healers are expected to DPS at this point, especially in M+ content.

So its really a remnant from a time in WoW, which is the direct inspiration to FF14s gameplay system, where it wasn't healing requirements but mana restraints not allowing healers to heal, plus healer damage at this point being much much lower than it was at any point in FF14. And before anyone goes all nostalgic on this golden age, it was a time where healers were literally forced to not cast anything for over 5 seconds so that their mana regeneration could kick in and even dps casters had to stop casting mid combat, but that was okay because Rogues and Warriors also had to desperately wait until their ressources filled enough to press one single button.

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Originally Posted by localman

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How many RPGs have healers that are strictly restricted to healing though? Maybe some old school RPGs but even some of those had healers be capable of damaging undead with Healing spells so you weren't even healing all the time in those.

The most modern game that I can think of in which you could play a purely passive character is probably the Divinity series and even then, enemies dealt too much damage to realistically heal thru it all that going purely offensive with some support was the better option and it even had the Healing Spells damage undead enemies trope.

Troll thread aside (the moment the OP talked about 'honing their rescue skills' really set the alarms off on that), my main problem with this topic is how disingenuous those who refuse to ever push a single DPS spell. No one is asking you to do nothing but DPS, or be that chad healer that manages to heal any content whatsoever (even in savage) without ever having to touch a non-damage GDC. Nor are we asking you to optimize your damage and try to maximise your damage and minimize your healing (as this requires whole team competence and skill, as if your other party members, especially in savage, derp or make mistakes, or take avoidable damage which is perfectly understandable and reasonable from time to time, you won't be able to). No, all we are asking is IF you don't have to heal, you might as well push a damage button. In dungeons, trials and raids different healers will have different ideas of what HP% you'll need to drop to before they consider healing, and that's fair enough. It's a play style difference (for example, I would heal the moment my tanks HP drops around to 50/60% in a pack because, especially in lv90 dungeons, I know how quickly that 50% can drop to 0 in WTW pulls if the tank derps or steps in a single AOE and I'd rather err on the side of caution rather then risk a wipe)

The point is, if everyone is at 100% (and there is currently no damage), you either stand still or push a damage button. There is no single fight in the game that has 100% uptime of constant damage. That means there is no fight where 100% uptime of healing is needed. If everyone is at 100%, you don't need to heal. At that point if you have more then a GDC or 2 gap of time before you need to heal, you should be pushing a damage button, otherwise you are spending multiple instances of 10-20sec in a fight doing absolute nothing but standing there motionlessly looking pretty (so basically a summoner's carbuncle at this point, except unlike that you're neither something cute nor emotional support).

That is just unfair to the rest of the 7 people in your team if they don't get those same bouts of downtime where they have to do something. It's called being a team player. Not elitist or something crazy, simply asking you attempt to do some damage if you don't need to heal. It's not a hard concept, and anyone who refuses to at least try and attempt it does not have anxiety, mana issues, or whatever. It's simply laziness. If you are spending 20s of a fight doing nothing because you don't need to heal, then everyone else also deserves the same right, and that means nothing will ever really get done no?

The other thing that gets me is outside of savage and ultimates (and even that is eliminated once you hit the farm/general weekly clear stage with your static) that has interesting healing (or more accurately, inconsistent bouts of healing), healing is very straightforward and simple. Surely doing nothing is as dull as a sack of rocks, right?

It made sense in WoW classic when we had Accuracy, 5s rule and so on but that was ages ago and even then there were some nice opportunities for damage depending on the content.
The only game where I heal spammed was in Ragnarok Online when I partied with a GCD Crusader because they nuked themself with every aoe cast, so it was my duty to keep buffs up but otherwise just heal spam like mad or I got a truck load of mobs making a beeline for me. That was one of I don't know how many classes/ specs in a single game. With every other spec it was either a more supportive playstyle with focus on buffs/ debuffs or even offensive by actively helping with damage.

The battlefield is not a peaceful enviroment and we're not nurses holding a patient's hand.
It's complete nonsense from a RPG standpoint. In every RPG I've ever played, single player or MMO, a healer that comes even close to a battlefield was always expected to be able to defend themself and attack as necessary.
Every D&D game had a huge array of much more useful spells for Clerics/ Druids than heal spells. Every oldschool grindy MMO like RO or Flyff had an alternative, offensive spec for the Priest-type classes and if someone went the support route, they had a lot more to do than just heal spam from the back row. Most older asian MMOs had some pretty nice dps skills that didn't need accuracy and were used as a downtime filler. Some even had synergies between damage and healing. Some healed entirely through damage.
In every RPG you're just a glorified potion that takes up a party spot if you're playing a "pure healer". The "pure healer" only makes sense for someone that works in a city or army camp and never sets foot outside where it's dangerous... which would be equivalent to standing in front of the dungeon entrance and waiting for the party to come out to patch them up after their (hopefully) successful adventure. I'm sure that's fun.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

How many RPGs have healers that are strictly restricted to healing though? Maybe some old school RPGs but even some of those had healers be capable of damaging undead with Healing spells so you weren't even healing all the time in those.

The most modern game that I can think of in which you could play a purely passive character is probably the Divinity series and even then, enemies dealt too much damage to realistically heal thru it all that going purely offensive with some support was the better option and it even had the Healing Spells damage undead enemies trope.

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Eh, the Divinity series has a pretty small array of healing spells and with their cooldown of several rounds, it was just a waste to focus on that. It works as a fun build on lower difficulties but even if you combine as many schools as possible to get a pure healer kit, it's not enough to keep it useful. And they scale so poorly to the point of being almost wasted AP in late game. They were great in early game when you barely had any skills and auto'd everything to death but quickly lost value as you progressed.

Play some P3S in PF and you get all the healing challenge you will need :3 Good luck!

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

Eh, the Divinity series has a pretty small array of healing spells and with their cooldown of several rounds, it was just a waste to focus on that. It works as a fun build on lower difficulties but even if you combine as many schools as possible to get a pure healer kit, it's not enough to keep it useful. And they scale so poorly to the point of being almost wasted AP in late game. They were great in early game when you barely had any skills and auto'd everything to death but quickly lost value as you progressed.

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Only if you didn't abuse scrolls and there was a LOT of stupidly overpowered Scrolls you could make in that game.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I really don't understand where this "healers ONLY heal" mindset even comes from. The only game I can even think of that actually has healers function like that is Everquest, but like, every other RPG I've ever seen had support characters flex between offense and defense.
- Literally every Final Fantasy
- Every Persona
- Pokemon (Chansey almost always carries Seismic Toss)
- Fire Emblem, many priests begin only being able to use staves but promote to using offensive magic.
- WoW
- Dofus/Wakfu
- Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Every Dragon Quest
- Every Star Ocean
- Every .Hack
- Every Tales of (In the earlier games, you typically do have 1 main healer who is mostly busy managing HP, but they also weave in offensive spells).
- Every Xenoblade and Xenosaga

Like seriously... what RPGs have characters that only ever heal throughout the entire game?

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At WORST, you'd have a healer that can do light damage or have plenty of buffs or debuffs. A good example, from your own list; Rene from Star Ocean 2. She could do some damage and had a few buffs to throw out but she's not going to go forward and attack.

Also most of what we'd probably think of White Mages tended to only heal, at least until they got Holy/Dia but even then they had more protective spells or debuffs to use. Also depending on the game they could fish for or use Staffs to proc other spells.

I mean I want to see how some people that think "Healers only heal" play other games.