Latest Official Developer Statements About Healer DPS?

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Originally Posted by Aravell

The biggest concern is that they take the fact that SGE is popular to mean that SGE has managed to satisfy us and they'll now continue this design path. It's really hard to know what they're thinking as they don't actually communicate with us clearly and they seem to be taking great pains to avoid any and all questions pertaining to healers or job design in general.

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That's a worry I have as well, but at the same time, there's a part of me that has too much faith in their ability to recognize that the job's popularity isn't from the people the job was initially designed for, nor has it pulled people from other roles into healing. If they want Sage to be the bridge for the unhappy healers to return to the role, then they would have to recognize that the job hasn't succeeded and should pivot. If all they care about is that some people like it though, then perhaps you're right. Or perhaps they really are so oblivious that they cannot tell the people that Sage was specifically addressing are still dissatisfied.

For my part, I've submitted feedback through the in-game support desk before as well outlining why Sage has failed and have repeatedly reported Toxikon as being broken and not working as intended. I'm doing what I can at least, which may not ultimately mean much, but I can't say I'm not trying to bring awareness to the issue.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Regardless, I would really appreciate a transparent discussion about what they actually want of the healers, how that correlates to the experience of playing a healer in solo content, normal content, and hardcore content, and how they feel about the unrelenting criticism the healer role continues to receive from at least a modest subset of players as well as if they plan to ever do anything about it, and if not, why?

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They thought monks hit a brick wall during ShB, and yet they don't think healers are already at that with their healing oGCD actions versus encounter design?

The band-aid answer to healing becoming more engaging would be, for Dawntrail onwards, simply adding more tankbusters, more raidwides through a fight if they want to add more healing actions (or charges for existing stuff). That doesn't sound really fulfilling to me, though, because you simply map the healing ogcds, like what already is, just in a busier capacity. It becomes a game of memorization rather than quick thinking or reflexes.

That doesn't future proof, though... imagine how 8.0 will be in that regard?

What they need to do is to redesign the damage profile. Can they do that without having to touch old content? Idk...

Yoshida is the Todd Howard of Square Enix

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Yoshida is the Todd Howard of Square Enix

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Healers just work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFcLyDb6niA

Regardless of what anyone says does it really make any sense for a healer to not DPS? There is no fight not even ultimate (hardest content in game) where a healer doesn't have a ton of spare time between healing. Imagine your group trying hard to complete content and one player only has to hit 1-2 abilities every 15 seconds. It's insulting to the other two roles to just expect to essentially afk through the fight. You have tools that can help the team so you should be doing everything in your power to help complete that goal. Tanks don't just get to sit there and do only enough damage to hold aggro. The question isn't really about being expected to, that answer is obvious, it should be about how much. I think healing/support abilities should become more prevalent to make the job less boring, not add more dps options.

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Originally Posted by Nobuyuki_Sanada

Regardless of what anyone says does it really make any sense for a healer to not DPS? There is no fight not even ultimate (hardest content in game) where a healer doesn't have a ton of spare time between healing. Imagine your group trying hard to complete content and one player only has to hit 1-2 abilities every 15 seconds. It's insulting to the other two roles to just expect to essentially afk through the fight. You have tools that can help the team so you should be doing everything in your power to help complete that goal. Tanks don't just get to sit there and do only enough damage to hold aggro. The question isn't really about being expected to, that answer is obvious, it should be about how much. I think healing/support abilities should become more prevalent to make the job less boring, not add more dps options.

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You keep repeating "I think healing/support abilities should become more prevalent to make the job less boring" without adding any examples of what you would expect to see or how you'd expect to use them.

Personally, I have a large selection of (depending upon the healing job) heals and utility in the form of shields, buffs, mitigation and HOTs. How will it be more interesting to add more? OK, SCH got expedient, maybe add one more unique skill to a specific job like WHM, OK.

Other than that, once someone in a party is healed - or in the process of being healed- whoopie. I shouldn't just be hitting one DPS skill. Damage is at least as valuable, not to mention there are multiple types of content and it shouldn't be miserable to solo content.

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Originally Posted by Nobuyuki_Sanada

Regardless of what anyone says does it really make any sense for a healer to not DPS? There is no fight not even ultimate (hardest content in game) where a healer doesn't have a ton of spare time between healing. Imagine your group trying hard to complete content and one player only has to hit 1-2 abilities every 15 seconds.

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From the looks of it you haven't done TEA. There is so much time in that fight to dps especially once it Alex Prime and Perfect Alex. Perfect Alex has 3 parts where he is just casting. Fate cal alpha, fate cal beta and temporal prison. The first two last about 30 seconds which adds to a whole minute and then temporal is a minute long enrage sequence where you get trapped. Not to mention his autos don't really hurt and you can heal everything with ogcds when he's present on the field.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

You keep repeating "I think healing/support abilities should become more prevalent to make the job less boring" without adding any examples of what you would expect to see or how you'd expect to use them.

Personally, I have a large selection of (depending upon the healing job) heals and utility in the form of shields, buffs, mitigation and HOTs. How will it be more interesting to add more? OK, SCH got expedient, maybe add one more unique skill to a specific job like WHM, OK.

Other than that, once someone in a party is healed - or in the process of being healed- whoopie. I shouldn't just be hitting one DPS skill. Damage is at least as valuable, not to mention there are multiple types of content and it shouldn't be miserable to solo content.

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fights need to be designed in a way to keep healers busy. If you can heal most fights without ever using a GCD that is a mistake, if you spend over half of your time hitting a damage skill on a class meant to support that is a mistake, if content is boring cause your role is meant to support and content is centered around you doing damage... yup you guessed it A MISTAKE. Almost all solo content is boring simply because it is meant for casual players. Lets not pretend that the glorified training dummies in the story/solo content are super entertaining for dps or tank roles to play against. I do think that companions should be more of a thing but that would take significant time/resources for a single role, could still be worth it. I want to see bosses hit more than just the tank outside of dodgeable AoE's. Boss's need to hit much more often and more targets. I want combo spells for heals so deciding who to use small heals and who to use big heals on is more skill based. oGCD heals need to be gutted and more meaningful interaction from the player needs to be incorporated into GCD heals. More support abilities can be added that help the team avoid damage such as movement speed buffs and damage nullifying bubbles.

The biggest problem with making more dps abilities is then your just becoming the dps role. If that's the route they want to go they should just save themselves time give the tanks healing abilities and just delete healers altogether. We play this role to support and heal if you don't get enjoyment from that then I'm sorry to tell you, but you don't like being a healer.

i'm glad the TRUE HEALERS™ are here to set us dirty green dps straight and remind us we don't actually like being healers!! so fkin badass...!!!!!!!

Uh oh the mind blenders are loose again. If you think its ok that healers have 1 dps button you gotta have something wrong up there. It doesn't matter how much you up the healing if an aspect of the job is clearly ass. Oh and btw, SE will never up the healing ever again because they are so afraid of the raid community getting angry that they can't clear a fight. So every new action, mitigation is just skill bloat as were the new skills in EW and ShB.