Should healers now be allowed to play how they choose to play?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Feyona

Sometimes or often Im not sure because I can only go on what Ive seen, like pfs people saying stuff like 'healers healing 100% Im out' This was in practice group. Im just giving an example here, and at that time I had no idea that I was doing anything wrong, not sure the other healer did either. My first static 'learn pro scholar in a week' Ok Ill try 'you didnt do it, goodbye' personal experience yes but nevertheless, seen it

---

Are we going back on this again? Because I'll respond with that I have never experienced that even once ever since the launch of 2.0

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

Are we going back on this again? Because I'll respond with that I have never experienced that even once ever since the launch of 2.0

---

Well I always consider that people are fortunate to get in good groups thats how people get better. One's experience does not cancel the other person's out, or are you not able to see that? The only experience I can bring here is my own. Wether its listened to or not. It is a fact for me, maybe others too. Who knows unless they bring it here. In which case they are in danger of exposing themselves to some kind of mental health assessment Ok an analogy of that could be 'Ive been robbed ' reply 'I havent so your robbery doesnt exist?'

I've been keeping up with this thread as much as I can but, to be frank, it honestly doesn't seem like the community is ready to have a debate on this topic. A large amount of this thread is just people arguing their side without even bothering to give the other side the time of day. Obviously this doesn't apply to the entire thread nor everyone posting in it.

I'm going to reiterate my points and what I've taken away from this thread:

Nobody in their right mind is asking for healers in the current battle system to only heal

Nobody (nobody reasonable, anyway) is asking for Cleric Stance to be removed from the game, nor that Healer DPS should be removed

Nobody is asking that healers be allowed to AFK or put in less effort than anyone else

What some people are asking for (myself included) is more varied playstyles between healers.

We already know that they're "revamping the battle system for 4.0". Funnily enough, a revamp of the battle system is what's needed to accomodate more variation in healer playstyles (healers that focus on support, healers that focus on dps, etc)

I don't know how these points can be made any clearer. This thread is plagued with an infinite argument loop:
Person #1: "I'd like it if healers had other VIABLE playstyles that involve something other than DPS"
Person #2: "How dare you try and be AFK the entire fight"
Person #3: "I don't want to DPS you can't make me do those things I want to use emotes during the fight"

Someone asks for something to change. Some people don't want it to change. So instead of all working together to let the developers know that some people would like a playstyle that is different from our own but still just as viable and challenging , we're all just stuck in a loop of fervently defending our own views.

Do I like DPS'ing as a healer? Sure, I wouldn't play one if I don't. Do I think it would be nice if they could add different playstyles that require the same effort? Of course.

Maybe if we stop bitching at each other and start looking into ways that we can all have our voices heard equally so nobody is left out then all of our suggestions and feedback could be taken into account.

A final addendum:
If anyone is truly so incensed by the mere though of a change in healer playstyles that they don't want to have a reasonable discussion, your point will be better heard if you simply don't post. If nobody wants something that's being suggested in a thread, it'll fade away naturally. Fanning the flames serves only to give the thread more exposure and thus more chance of being taken into consideration by developers, because they aren't going to be able to read through 70+ pages of a thread.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Feyona

People do come into the game thinking they are there to heal.

---

This is my main gripe with new players in general: not reading the ability tooltips and being hung up on the meta of some other game. Looking at the tooltips and skillsets with an open mind along with some napkin math, everyone should be able to figure out how the game should be played, in my opinion anyhow. Unfortunately, we don't live in such a nice world.

I totally understand the plight for different healing gameplay options, it's just we don't have it in the game currently.

It's worth noting that if you're working with another healer, there's expected to be some level of coordination between the two of you. If you're both healing all of the time, then you're bound to end up healing the same targets and overhealing. Instead, you could be splitting the responsibility efficiently and giving each other time to set up dots.

In PF practice groups, most people are too focused on learning the fight from their own perspective to troubleshoot problems in other players, unless it's glaringly obvious. If you're a SCH main playing with a WHM/AST who is predominantly main healing, and you're just throwing overhealing physicks on top of their heals, people are going to point it out (i.e. hey, your WHM is doing most of the heavy lifting on their own in that part, why not put up some dots?) If you're functionally solo healing part of a fight, I doubt that anyone in PF is going to overly scrutinise your dps, especially not during prog. Your co-healer will be expected to take advantage of this window to push their dps, however.

That isn't an issue of healers not being allowed to heal. It's an issue of understanding how to coordinate with your co-healer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kitfox

This is my main gripe with new players in general: not reading the ability tooltips and being hung up on the meta of some other game. Looking at the tooltips and skillsets with an open mind along with some napkin math, everyone should be able to figure out how the game should be played, in my opinion anyhow. Unfortunately, we don't live in such a nice world.

I totally understand the plight for different healing gameplay options, it's just we don't have it in the game currently.

---

Ability tool tips only state you could weave in some dps though , doesnt really say your supposed to stance dance with it. I mean before heaven's ward there was nothing to say that, and at 50 i just used to put shadowflare down without cleric

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Connor

Maybe if we stop bitching at each other and start looking into ways that we can all have our voices heard equally so nobody is left out then all of our suggestions and feedback could be taken into account.

---

My suggestion would be following:

AST:

• Half the cooldown of the card skills
• reduce cardbuff duration by 1/3
• optional set Draw on the GCD

This would make ASTs more busy with their cards and reduce the amount of time they have for dealing damage.

SCH: Just stays like it is, he can be the damage dealing healer

WHM: i don't know...sorry...maybe some fluid skin for shield that reinforces themself via lifesteal and does some extra damage, or aero skin, which works similar to Veangence, but must be channeled...i can't imagine much for WHM...maybe the main difference between SCH and WHM would be DoT VS direct damage...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Legion88

My suggestion would be following:

AST:

• Half the cooldown of the card skills
• reduce cardbuff duration by 1/3
• optional set Draw on the GCD

This would make ASTs more busy with their cards and reduce the amount of time they have for dealing damage.

SCH: Just stays like it is, he can be the damage dealing healer

WHM: i don't know...sorry...maybe some fluid skin for shield that reinforces themself via lifesteal and does some extra damage, or aero skin, which works similar to Veangence, but must be channeled...i can't imagine much for WHM...maybe the main difference between SCH and WHM would be DoT VS direct damage...

---

These are some great suggestions that accomodate more varied playstyles.
I always imagined White Mage getting standard White Magic support spells like Bravery and Faith so Astrologian's buffs don't end up cancelling out White Mages.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Feyona

I mean before heaven's ward there was nothing to say that

---

While I do remember that healer DPS was still considered important in things like Coil, I can't remember if people were as rigid about healer dps as they are currently. I definitely think the expectation was always there for healers to dps, but we didn't see anything from the game that's as concrete as the things we have now (e.g Hall of the Novice, the ever-growing healer DPS toolkit, developer responses).

The problem with altering the battle system to allow healers to only heal is that there is no way to do so without MAJOR drawbacks. Yes, you could just straight up make the enemies hit harder but that just pushes the goalposts a little further, they will still wind up with downtime best spent DPSing if they gear up further past the baseline required. If you make it so you'll need to constantly heal even with the highest feasible gear for that content, you run into bigger problems: There stops being any distinction between content like dungeons, 24-man raids, and savage raids as they all need to fit within this same narrow band of damage output that requires constant healing but is still possible to beat. It also transforms healer into hands down the most gear-intensive role in the game, with literally nothing allowable besides BiS.

The second alternative is to restrict the effect of stats on heals, either by having stats literally not affect the amount healed, or having the caps on stats be so low that it's assumed they're all hit by default. Unfortunately, that requires a drastically different game more suited for older MMOs. FFXIV is more about executing mechanics properly, whereas older games were all about resource management. Essentially, this makes your maximum MP the only stat that actually matters. However, this only really tends to work in games where you can either escape from battle and make multiple runs, with your maximum MP dictating the length of each run, or ones where resources replenish slowly between fights so it becomes an endurance of managing your resources from fight to fight. In a game like this where it's assumed you're going into each fight with all your resources, your stats then become a simple pass/fail of if you have enough max MP to do this fight. Also, it means tank damage mitigation needs to be similarly capped to prevent them from providing downtime for you, and no content can output more than a given amount of damage per second as it would be literally unhealable otherwise, which stifles where content can go.

The third option is to give them support options to still satisfy that "pure support" that so many folks seem to pine for. Unfortunately, when boiled down you have two options: You can either increase the survivability of your party (which, if your issue is having excess downtime due to nobody needing heals, is about as useless as standing around), or you can decrease the survivability of your opponents, which is the same goal as contributing DPS, it simply changes the manner in which you do so and possibly your target. Not to mention the issue of what one does if all relevant buffs are up and nobody needs healing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Urthdigger

which is the same goal as contributing DPS, it simply changes the manner in which you do so and possibly your target.

---

I agree that the first point of simply increasing incoming damage doesn't work.

I've never seen anyone suggest anything even close to the second point; it's an interesting alternative, but as you say, it wouldn't work in the game at all.

Point 3, however, is what I think is the most viable alternative.
That way healers that aren't dps'ing can still contribute to the party but in a different way without contributing something pointless.

I've made this exact point in a previous post; adding something like dps-increasing support abilities allows a different playstyle that still achieves the same effect. If we assumed, say, an Astrologian's cards were on the GCD (and balanced accordingly, obviously), then you now have a healer job that can focus on healing and contributing to party dps in a way that's different from it's other healers.


Base card durations are 15-30 seconds. With a 2.5 GCD, you'd need 20 seconds of non-stop card placement to place these buffs on an 8-man party, and this would only increase as things like raid awareness are considered (e.g considering who's best to buff, what card have you drawn, should you Royal Road, etc). This assumes you have done absolutely no healing at all. As long as support abilities are short duration they could easily fill healer downtime in a lot of content (obviously barring easy content where there's next-to-no-damage anyway). This changes when AoE is taken into account, because you can then place a single buff on the party at once. But with a decent variety of support abilities, and in an ideal world, a single buff wouldn't be optimal for every party member. You could increase the physical damage of the party, but what about casters? You could increase the MP restoration of the party, but what about the melee?

We still don't know anything about what the developers intend to change in 4.0. They may well implement any one of the three points you've put forward, or we could see changes so off-the-wall that nobody could have predicted them. And of course, perhaps nothing will change at all.