No, but sadly that's what the Developers feel so that's our reality.
That's not the fault of us having any DPS kit, that's the fault of there barely being anything to heal in said casual content.
I'm 100% in agreement and I'd rather be healing as well, that's always been my jam. But I don't agree that pressing a button every 10 seconds is even remotely fun for any length of time. SE have simply chosen the path of making casual content as non challenging as possible and genuinely difficult to fail at.
That's the whole reason why we like the healer role.
Your problem I feel is one of two things:Quote:
As for being forced, a whm can deal almost as much as a dps in dungeon mobs. If you know that, how can you not use it? It would feel incredibly guilty knowing how much you could do and not using it. It would be griefing. That's what I mean by forced, even if one is sitting behind you telling you how to play. When I do casual content I hardly even get to heal, it's just dps dps dps, because anything else is slowing down the kill. I don't want to play green dps I want to heal. If we didn't have dps, even if it means only pressing a button every 10 seconds, that would be more fun
The first is possibly the healing role isn't for you. As I said to the first part of your quote, the whole reason why we healer mains are drawn to the role is due to the added difficulty of precision management of our CDs on top of knowing the fight well. Healers have always been a stressful and demanding role in MMOs. There's a reason why DPS are more commonplace -
DPS only have to worry about positioning, what resources they have to manage, and their rotation (I'm sticking uptimes on buffs here btw).
Tanks have the above, plus mitigation, boss positioning (if there is any), and self sustain if they have.
Healers have the above (the dps part for clarity) plus keeping the party alive.
What people fail to realize, is that the more work your role/class puts into doing its job the more likely you're going to be forgiven when you mess up. Where you're seeing the whole "you should be doing this" argument is closer towards endgame when people feel like you should know your class and arguably you should.\
The other problem I feel you may have is you aren't experienced. And that is 100% fine. No one is going to care that you aren't optimizing in casual content. I know this, because I was in your position. For an entire year in the what near 3 years I've been playing this game, I was healing primarily with GCDs and I couldn't balance dps with healing. I learned, got better. Do I still dip into GCDs? Yes. Do I still struggle with dps and healing? Yes. Is that a problem? No. It never has been. There are many factors that can take place where I am healing more than dpsing:
- Tank's in low gear
- I'm in low gear
- Tank's mitigations aren't spread out well
- I'm healing, tired, when I shouldn't be
- Bardum's Mettle Wall to Wall
- Limited kit due to syncing down
- Dps is standing in the Azim Steppe when the rest of the party's in Vylbrand
- Dps/Tank is taking unnecessary damage
- Dps/I am pulling aggro off the tank
- The pull is too big for me/tank/dps to handle
- I'm in an alliance/raid where my cohealer is dead/dc'd
- I'm in an alliance raid where several of the healers are dead and need rezzing
Etc.
Learning how to heal and dps is for people for are more experienced and who are comfortable with their class. This isn't to say all you should be doing is just healing, yes you are encouraged to dps. However, what I am saying, what we've been continously saying is - if you are able to balance between dpsing and healing, if there is nothing for you to heal, don't just stand there and wait for damage, do damage.
But again, adding or removing DPS skill won't make these player do more or less (maybe a bit less if you remove the DoT)
You could add 4 dps skills to each healer and they'd still do the same, not much.
So why refuse adding new dps skills, which is something that has been going on for years now, to maybe not upset a group of people who in the first place do not care.
Anyone struggling with that is, in the first place, not doing anything that would require them doing dps. Because if spamming 111111 requires too much brain-ram then just executing a basic EX trial strat would be already out of reach to such player. Which isn't an issue, that's why we have dungeon, normal raid, 24-man raid where you can be dead 100% of the encounter.Quote:
but for some people it's just not possible to divide their focus like that. Idk why people just can't accept that like SE has apparently accepted it. This entire forum seems like an attack on anyone unwilling to dps when the correct term might be unable.
But why penalise player who want more because some can't?
At this point they should just remove EX, Savage and Ultimate because some can't and it's too stressing for them.
There are DPS doing so low that you don't even understand how it is possible yet no one tell them a thing. They're actually doing less than spamming True Thrust on the boss. yet it dies.
Yet the dps role isn't punished because some are incompetent to the point of being unable to chain a 123 combo, or even just spam 1 endlessly in melee range.
So why should healer who want a more engaging gameplay (or downtime) be penalized?
They will not use these skills anyway and if they do, they'll use them wrong like they do for the entirety of their kit. Because any healer properly healing at somepoint starts dpsing because they get bored. You have to be one of a kind to enjoy standing still and doing nothing for 20min everytime you're doing a dungeon or a raid.
I have NEVER a healer actually doing nothing. I have seen plenty of healer doing useless things, like doing MedicaII > Medica everytime the boss does a raid burster barely dropping us to 90%. I have seen healer spaming Regen on everyone (probably coming from WoW as a resto druid).
Someone above said that healer who don't dps and only focus on healing tend to struggle more to keep their tank alive than a healer actually dps'ing 90% of the time.
This is not a hyperbole, these healers tend to just be plain bad. You could give them spammable benediction with a 5000 potency medicaII hot and they'd still manage to loose the tank or panick. Yet they'd still do something.
So can't they just add those god damn spells that have been requested for 4 years now and let the one who want to have fun with that, have their fun and call it a day?
It won't make healing more stressful to these players, if these spell were to be below lv 80 they'd probably level up to 90 without even noticing new spell have been added.
regarding "there is something wrong with getting mad with healers not adding DPS"
I would argue we could say "there's nothing wrong with a tank only holding the aggro" >> doing 1 aoe every 15-20s or so
there's nothing wrong with a dps doing any kind of dps >> a dragoon spamming True Thrust on a 12 mob pull
i mean sure, they're doing their role, the tank is tanking, the dps is dps'ing and the healer is healing. If everyone is fine with spending 1h in a dungeon then sure why not.
there's definitely something wrong being mad at a struggling healer doing no dps. Yes, because you're being mad at someone already struggling.
But there's a difference between struggling and
While I still feel this is bait, I do want to comment because I all but guarantee if SE were to ever remove DPS abilities entirely from Healers, the role would die above the casual level. In fact, I almost want to see it happen if only to watch SE immediately backpedal when those same people constantly insisting healers should only heal will suddenly be screaming at hour long queues.
So while this isn't going to be a complete 1-to-1 comparison, I would like to share this anyway.
I played TERA for about 6 or 7 months once it came to PS4, and the healers in that game had sort of a similar case.
While the healer I played(Mystic) had a decent array of damaging abilities, they were so useless to use in content(other than a DoT that reduced defense) because while DPS classes were doing hundreds of thousands(sometimes millions) of damage per hit, you'd only be doing ten thousand damage per hit anyway. It was so bad that healers died out pretty quick in the overworld scene.
I guess a good comparison to 14 would be playing a Healer, but your Chocobo does all the damage for you. It's awful and painfully slow and tedious, and if they ever did remove DPS abilities, I'd go right back to MCH.
What can I say? These subforums are a festering pit at this point and the people who are ok with this aren't sitting here crying about it. Misery loves company after all. Personally I tend to mostly only see the same 5-6 faces here talking about the same three topics over and over again.
If a healer is switching from their allies to a target "constantly", something is very wrong. Typically, I scan the party list but I rarely need to actually switch targets. If I frequently need to switch, then things are going south.
I can't speak to controller issues as I don't use one however I have seen various ways to make it easier,. I don't have issues target switching and using cards, and I definitely want at least one additional DPS skill to weave, by the way I main AST, and there are so many OGCDs that a few extra DPS buttons, even with cards, isn't an issue.
Don't forget, damage is predictable- it's one thing if someone doesn't know a fight, but once a fight is known, there's no harm in having extra DPS buttons, provided there are no serious issues with the rest of the party, and its much more interesting than 122222222222222222222122222222222222222222222222221222222222
no job *deserves* only 2 DPS skills, cards are basically busywork. People like pretty animations, not that there is anything wrong with that, but it definitely wears off when you find that you end up spending most of a fight hitting the same 2 buttons - and before anyone jump into the why don't you just roll a DPS- I'm not asking for the same DPS as a DPS. I'm asking for some enhanced complexity as the character evolves, that's very different.
Adding a 3rd or even a 4th DPS skill would not force anyone to use them, in fact it would make the path for let's say 75 to 90 even more interesting because franking, just strengthening the one existing dot isn't giving me the impression that there is any growth in my job at all.
Give me an AoE DoT on all healers and another oGCD damaging skill. Single Target or AoE depending on the class.
Return Aero 3 for WHM. If they want WHM to be more light magic based, then upgrade it to Aeolus and make it a Tornado of Lights. Since they have Assize, a Single Target oGCD that I can use for Damage and maybe some utility as either an MP restore or damage down debuff would be nice.
SCH should have Miasma 2 back for their AoE DoT and an AoE oGCD Aetherflow Spender. Personally, I'd go for Shadowflare because that builds up SCH as their old DoT mage origins again and gives them an AoE Slow effect back.
Give AST an AoE DoT, and call it Nebula or something. They already have 1.5 oGCD damage skills with Earthly Star and Lord of Crowns so I believe they'll be fine with just an AoE DoT added, simply because they have their cards to give them more busy work.
I won't comment on SGE.
If NOTHING else, this way Healers have an AoE DoT to go alongside our AoE nuke so that trash mobs in dungeons die quicker, which is nice utility in that department while making down time in higher tier content feel less dull since we now juggle our AoE and Single Target DoTs. Just this small thing, 2 skills, that's all I'm asking.
I've already said that I wouldn't mind AST having 1 or 2 more dps options if you looked at my previous response.
My argument was: AST is fine with having 2 dps options because it has other things to do than just heal unlike the other healers.
Perhaps deserves is too strong a word, so I'll put it like this:
AST, unlike other healers does not need more dps buttons. Its supposed to be a busy healer, so while we could add 1 or 2 more dps buttons, we can ALSO shorten the CD on cards (both minor and major arcana) and maybe Astrodyne (provided its effects get tweaked). It can have either or and I will be satisfied.
WHM, SGE, and SCH by contrast need something to shorten their down time. I recommend more dps buttons and in WHM's case an actual rotation that feeds into the Blood Lily and have its lilies be oGCDs.
I'll just have to say that I disagree. I would much rather have extra DPS options on AST. I would rather not have card CDs shortened. I don't see the disadvantage to anyone to the extra DPS option, if as you say AST is supposed to be "busy" then this would also fulfill that design. Shortening card CDs? Don't particularly care for that. Now, if they change they way that they propose Redraw for EW, I would like that.
I think you overestimate how busy AST is, sure the cards involve needing to switch between players and assign them, but honestly it's not that hard as long as you don't have issues clicking the party list consistently and know which card goes to who without having to think on it too hard
Plus the cards are meant to be done on the OGCD, meaning that they're just another thing to weave instead of a legitimate part of your DPS rotation
The real issue is that SE has made several game design decisions that are so involved with one another that they just can't revamp healers without revamping many other things in the game.
In my personal opinion, what is really lacking is class identity (which we kind of had up until HW~SB).
Just as an example, we could imagine something like :
- WHM being the main healer class, with a myriad of healing skills
- AST being more support-oriented (i.e. buffs/debuffs)
- SCH being a barrier support and DPS hybrid
But let's say that, hypothetically, this was the state of each healer in the current game.
Who would play WHM ? Probably no one, right ?
Even if AST and SCH had only one single-target heal and one AoE heal in their kit, that would have been enough to heal through the current content of the game. Everyone would only want a combination of SCH/AST in their party.
So what would SE do to justify the existence of WHM ? They would bump the healing requirements of raids and dungeons, which would in turn create a "main support/off support" meta where WHM is the king.
And this is where the real problem lies, because SE wants classes to be as equal as possible ; they're doing their best to try to avoid creating a meta where one healer class would be required in a specific dungeon/raid.
This means that :
- All content has to be standardized
- All class toolkits have to be standardized
On top of that, since SE also wants all healer classes to be accessible to new players, this means that healing requirements have to be weak.
So we're essentially looking at : Dumbed-down content that always feels the same. Tada !
Which is why in the end, most of us agree that the only viable solution with the current game design would be to give more DPS spells to healers, so that at least they're more busy during fights. But yeah, if SE thinks that even that is too much to manage for the majority of their playerbase, then unfortunately i think we're stuck with what we have my gents.
I really think it's a shame, because FFXIV allows you to play every class on the same character. This model is pretty convenient for MMOs where you have to adapt your party roster depending on the content you're going for.
"Oh, we need strong heals for this one ? Sure, i'll switch to WHM", is what i wish i was saying instead of "Darn, i can't join as AST because there's already one in the party ? Well it's ok i'll just switch to WHM, it's the same anyway lol"
Of course, the first only works if the player in question doesn't loathe WHM.
I'm guessing SE wants to avoid situations where players have to choose between having fun and not feeling like their job choice is holding the team back.
In fact, they said they were surprised when they found out more people than expected "mained" multiple jobs, so... who knows.
As for me, anybody playing with me will just have to accept that I will not play current AST, even if it makes the content trivial, and I would rather not raid... so you could also blame people like me for the current situation.
I don't think I am. While we know the CDs of Minor Arcana and Astrodyne (and the cards have never changed) I'd rather wait to feel out the 6.0 changes before I immediately say yes to more dps.
Personally, I don't think it'll change much. Quite the opposite I don't think it'll change how I feel about being bored on AST at all. But I'm usually very negative and am trying a positive approach. I don't think you are wrong. And I still welcome dps to do other than Malefic and Combust, but I'mma play the waiting game (and probably be disappointed).
But even if the game lets you swap jobs with minimal friction, it still won't give you all of them at max level for free. There is still the time sink to max level that costs something to the user.
I think you are absolutely right about the reasons why the game is like now, and I would go further and say that it had to be this way, interchangeable jobs within a role is the progress the game had to go into. The only other alternative would be NO NEW JOBS IN THE GAME, not after Heavensward atleast. I can kinda imagine a FFXIV where DRK, MCH and AST were the very last jobs added to the game forever. Then you weave heavy interdependencies between all the jobs and maybe bump raid party sizes to 3 tanks, 3 healers and 6 dps. Maybe in this timeline Ninja also never existed so now you can fit all jobs in the game into the savage raid!
So we can go mad. White Mage is the only healer who can actually heal raid wides, but the party will not even survive if there was no preemptive succor and of course AST has a party wide damage reduction card to play to combine with it. We can force all jobs to a single niche that they do till the end of time, nothing will change, we got the game solved. I hope SCH and WHM players enjoy running out of mana in dungeons when they are alone because we tuned all MP usage based on BRD and AST mana recovery utility.
And expansions will truly have more hype than before when they can never include new jobs because there is no design space to add new roles and the whole raiding breaks the moment something comes along and disrupts the formula. Dip the game into amber, let it set, put it into a museum.
But anyway, make Gravity, Holy and Art of War very expensive and do tons of damage, like quadruple the potency number and put a 3-5 second cast time on them. If you want to add DPS options to healers, I want people to name one or two actions from each job that they first remove so there is room for replacement, if you ask for black mage action set to be attached to white mage whole hog, you are not to be taken seriously.
The time commitment to level each job in this game (And just about any other modern subscription theme park MMO that I'm aware of) is minuscule compared to the time we will spend at the end game. I suspect levels 54 and 59 in OG Everquest took almost as long individually as it took me to take Dancer from Limsa to 80 TBH.
The thing is we did actually have situations where different jobs were better in certain raids than others even within a specific tier. Midas was a great example because AST and WHM were competitive with each other at this point. WHM had the advantage of better reach which it's healing kit. AST struggled with AoE radius by comparison but bought the raid buffs and MP/TP recovery to the table instead. I used to switch between to the two throughout the raid evening depending on the turn we were entering and it was great.
This just isn't a thing now because all 3 healers have kits that are highly overtuned for anything this game throws at us. The only difference that matters right now between the 3 healers currently (and probably the 4th come next month) is the combined raid dps. That's a sad sad state of affairs that's come about thanks to SE not paying attention to the corner they've been designing healers into for the past 2-3 years.
I'm not really sure where you're going with the rest of your post though? I can't say I remember anyone asking for full a BLM rotation?
repose, fluid aura, cure 1, medica 1, afflatus rapture + solace -> one "afflatus next cure2/medica2" button
5 free buttons:
(1.b3) > t3=dia > (2.b4) > (3.f3) > f4=glare x3 > (4.f1) > f4=glare x3 > (5.despair) > xeno=misery
works ^^
People here can argue until the are blue in the tits. I would like more evolved job design and such but at the same time I
do die in raids and the like because our healer (mainly WHMs, funnily enough) decided they hast to spam their damage abilities. It does happen often enough so I'm not sure where I stand on the issue, honestly.
Dumbing down content certainly isn't the way, though.
The fact that some healers often decide to spam their abilities even with this dumbed down kit, must prove the dumbing down didn't prevent healers from tunnel visioning in the first place or made healers "heal more". So using healers that don't heal as a reason for the dumbing down isn't a useful argument.
Using the "oww i died" argument doesn't even necessarily mean that the healer was tunnel visioning. It can happen, healers can definitely make mistakes, however party members can also ignore mechanics or stand out of range of heals.
All of this to say that it's not an argument for limiting us to 2 DPS skills. I could then say that I've seen a lot of tanks that can't mitigate, they must have too much on their minds with DPSing. Let's take away a few DPS skills, they won't mind and just beef them up with more CDs.
Yes and no. It's the DPS indoctrination that leads some healer to stress out so much that they neglect the very reason why they are in a group in the first place -> to heal.
I think I wouldn't mind more DPS skills. The problem is that it's so ingrained in one part of the community to always DPS that it be ones a double edged sword.
Increasing the difficulty would go a long way, though. I did Coils on min ilvl/no echo all the way through and using DPS skills was a luxury. lol But I can see that that kinda challenge would turn off too many. So, yes, healers need more to do outside healing or the encounters need to change.
Still don't like the whole DPS mentality. All it does is stifle job creativity.
The "DPS indoctrination" is the result of game design. There is no other avenue for a Healer Job to be useful when heals are not needed. You can certainly blame individuals for pushing DPS too far and fail to keep their party alive, but you can't blame the healer community as a whole for pushing the idea that maximizing DPS contribution is a virtue a healer should aspire to.
There is nothing else a healer can optimize around.
Optimizing heals leads to the same result as optimizing DPS: Minimizing overhealing, freeing GCDs, minimizing MP cost of survival. That leads to free time a healer can only employ in the only thing that is useful and available to them: Doing damage.
Whm: loses cure 1, plenary and medica
Gains: Water 1/2/3/4/5, Aero 3, glare separate to stone. Water when procced by stone gives mp refund. Glare costs 1 lily on a 60s cd, when used aero 3 becomes tornado, water becomes flood, stone becomes quake and dia becomes banish. Banish deals a full dia's damage and restores mp
Astro: loses play (fold it back into draw, its just waste of space) Undraw and benefic 1
Gains: Stella (changed to be proc based fan dance 3 aoe from malefic or gravity) Disable (does damage and silences. 2 charges) and almagest (does large aoe damage, dot and extends buff durations on allies by 12s)
Sch: loses aetherpact, dissolve union and dissipation
Gains: Shadowflare, miasma 2, bane or fester
We could do more if we really wanted to. Whm in particular has a lot of unused slots.
I mean I've watched WHM almost completely ignore healing just to get as many glares in as possible. Which, is great and all but if the fight requires both healers and only one is doing all the work, that gets pretty annoying. Healers are literally meant to heal , idk why people want to DPS so much on them. If you want to DPS why not just play a DPS? It's still so confusing to me why someone plays a healer just to focus on DPSing the entire time.
Eeeh I don't buy it. Random healers were potentially every bit as bad right back in ARR. Have we already forgotten TitanHM pugs? Pre nerf Pharos Sirius? The difference is that now they've realised that it's easy enough to throw a few rocks vs just standing around doing next to nothing. This isn't even a healer exclusive thing. The difference is that people seem to lose their minds when they die through lack of heals because the clueless healer they got lumbered with is struggling to do much more than merely breath. DPS/Tank fails cause a wipe though? Reform or go again. People don't seem to get nearly as salty over it.
I don't get the mentality that healers should be immune from failure. It just strikes me as people expecting healers to be nothing more than pocket heal slaves, their own gameplay and enjoyment be damned.
ARR embraced pushing every role equally and had a genuine functioning difficulty curve as a result. Something we've just not seen since.
Uh no. That's a false claim right there sir.
Virus was massively valued in ARR, organised virus chains were a critical part of early T5 progression.
Eye for an eye was also a powerful ability.
Both were valuable parts of a healer's kit and certainly weren't shunned in any form.
Healer's being the stale imitation of what they once were isn't the communities fault. It's the manner in which SE have consistently and repeatedly designed healers one expansion at a time with little to no long term vision outside of 'remove all the complexities'. There's absolutely no vision in what they've been doing ever since Stormblood, nor is their seemingly any experienced testing for that matter.
Chances are, it's because the other healer does not understand who, and when to heal. "omg! the team is at 50% health! better indom + crit succor immediately!" is not efficient when the next raidwide aoe is in a minute, especially if the team would survive as is. And if you *need* the whole team at 100% HP like o8s, back in SB, Divine Seal + Cure III. It takes seconds and you certainly do not need 2 people to do that.
If the other healer just panic heals during the whole fight and doesn't let you tick your Medica II, there's no point for the WHM to do anything about it but DPS in order to contribute.
The focus isn't on DPS. On the contrary, it's all about how to contribute to your team in the best possible way. You will rarely use GCD heals aside from Medica II. Your oGCDs are more than enough in regular situations. As a result, most of your gameplay as a healer isn't actually healing,since you heal huge numbers, in an extremely fast manner. Aside from DPSing, I do not see how else you could contribute to your team during the time you're not healing.
Right now, if you see anything else that healers can do that isn't DPSing when they aren't healing, please let me know, because I would like to find out.