For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

...what do you like about those Jobs?

Sure sure, "more damage buttons/rotation", but is that it, or is there something more that could be incorporated into Healers? Mobility? Utility? Buffs? Melee attacks?

What are the things you like about your main(ish) DPS Job aside from rotation?

If it's nothing other than DPS rotation, what is it you really like about that? (More than 2 buttons isn't really constructive, so what I mean is more depth, like maybe you like BRD or DNC's procs that always make the rotation different encounter to encounter, like AST cards do; maybe you like RDM's mix of melee and cast style, or the extensive burst [6 GCDs long], etc)

I enjoy Dancer’s gameplay. I like that the rotation involves adapting to a light amount of RNG elements. I like the burst. I like that, while playing as a Dancer, I still pay a lot of attention to my teammates and the boss to utilizing healing and mitigation.

But ultimately, why I play Dancer and not Sage, despite liking Sage’s style and aesthetic much more, is because as a Dancer, I feel like I’m playing the game. The entire point of MMO cooldown-based combat is picking the right tool for every moment—making choices between all your actions. Playing as a Sage, or any healer, I am robbed of that experience. Constantly, you are shoved into dead windows where nothing is happening, where I could go grab a glass of water while doing controller inputs, come back, and see nothing has changed, because the majority of the “choices” I make are all the same button: Dosis.

I have, in the past, used Sage in dungeons, and would aggressively try to slap barriers in each party member individually and hope that at least 3 break just so I could have another button to use on trash pulls, but it felt like pulling teeth to try and get an incredibly mediocre extra 3 button presses. I shouldn’t need to bend over backwards to experience what the combat system is supposed to elicit. It should be available by default.

At the end of the day, its not about how many buttons are damage, healing, utility, or attack buffs, it’s about 4 jobs under the same umbrella being denied to gameplay experience this combat system is made to create. And that is game design failure.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

But ultimately, why I play Dancer and not Sage, despite liking Sage’s style and aesthetic much more, is because as a Dancer, I feel like I’m playing the game. The entire point of MMO cooldown-based combat is picking the right tool for every moment—making choices between all your actions. Playing as a Sage, or any healer, I am robbed of that experience. Constantly, you are shoved into dead windows where nothing is happening, where I could go grab a glass of water while doing controller inputs, come back, and see nothing has changed, because the majority of the “choices” I make are all the same button: Dosis.

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100%. The other week, I attended a board game night. One of those deckbuilders where you spend (resource) on new cards, etc. I got quite unlucky the first few turns. The cheap stuff was bought out. I got stuck in a cycle where I didn't have enough (resource) to do anything about buying more resource generation. Each turn was essentially, do I buy a garbage card if I can afford one, or do I move a token to a spot where it'll get immediately destroyed by an opponent, or do I pass my turn.

Those aren't choices. You could get a reasonably simple AI to sit in for me. I ended up in conversation with other people in the kitchen. Ten turns deep and I wasn't bothering to go back to the table, I was just yelling "do what I do every turn. Or surprise me, I don't care". I can deal with losing. I check out when I'm not actually playing the game.

Healing feels a lot like that. With occasional interruptions for triage that last maybe a GCD or two. There's so much that's automatic (Assize, Embrace, Kardia). Your decision makes so little impact (your tools are practically identical, just flat HP restores on a cooldown or flat HP restores with an MP cost). I could write a pair of Jambi The Genie scripts for single-target and AOE heal that selects one at random, and I probably wouldn't do half bad. I could yell vague minimal-input commands from the kitchen and be "playing" the game as effectively as I do from the board.

As a DPS I'm actually doing something. Granted, it's not the game of strategic spell fencing you get in a well-designed single-player RPG, but mechanics can help make up for that. Which resource am I building now? Do I need to save an Accelerate for moving, or flipping my GCD, or can I burn it for a little extra non-Jolt action? I have a melee combo, when is the best time to use it for moving? It's not like a lily where I can just belch it out even when it's useless; a melee combo is always useful. Don't even get me started on Black Mage. Do I overwrite Thunder here to smuggle a proc through this untargetable phase? Is blowing Firestarter better now because I have Manafont up and it'll fall off before the end of my ice phase? I'm ankle-deep in the decision tree that is BLM, and I'm unsure if I even vibe with the juggling act playstyle, but I can see the insane corner-cutting masters of it do to cleverly sneak more damage. You're always interacting with the encounter. Your micro-choices have an impact that ripples forward for 10, even 20 seconds in the future. You don't have a kit set up as if spamming boring, uninteractive, abilities back-to-back is peak gameplay. Monk's kit isn't set up to encourage you to spam Bootshine as if it were what you're "supposed" to do. The healer kits are all about boring spamming. Spam Glare. Spam Broil. Spam Cure, there's a passive that rewards you for it! Spam Lilies, there's a flower blast in it for you! Use Plenary, the buff works in a way that makes you wonder why the kit wants you to think spamming Medica is great!

Like Ty said. I'm not playing a game as a healer. I'm a Breaking The Limits solo duty regen buff that needs to wake up once a minute to reapply myself and one of those Ghimlyt Dark autoattacking NPCs. Hell with that. Allow me to interact with the combat system.

Rdm for me but thinking to get into blm, the thing that I hate about rdm and its been this way too long atm its that its always losing to blm/smn in terms of dps damage and could really use some love. I like the whole ver this thing giving it a mix of blm/whm like traditional ffs but yeah it be nice that they hit harder , but their kit is verstaile only dps with a good high heal ability

I don't main DNC, but I use it for casual stuff like 24 man on farm to avoid the boredom on doing it on healer.

Pretty much in the same boat regarding it as Ty. DNC is just so much more satisfying to play in trivial content. The burst window is quite literally everything that AST fails to achieve now. DNC is a significant but not overwhelming APM jump compared to AST where the APM goes through the roof to the point that you need to pocket Lightspeed for it and pulling it off is outright suffering when it invariably aligns with some major mechanic. DNC's feels impactful and powerful, trash packs melt, big numbers flash by. AST's feels unrewarding and impotent by comparison, you pull it off cleanly and everyone else's logs go up by a few percent. /thumbsup

Not to mention, DNC just feels more fluid and dynamic in play. It's mobility is perfect, it has just enough group healing to feel useful in clutch situations without hamstringing your own damage. If you're fortunate enough to be running with a friend who does good damage and keeps their GCD rolling, even better.

Lastly, DNC is enjoyable in terrible groups where you get chances to bail people out with your cooldowns, and it's enjoyable in top notch groups where you really get to reap the benefits of your buffs and pocket a few extra oGCDs to boot.

Meanwhile, healing really requires an awful group to not be stale and repetitive in casual content. Bad groups can be a good test of your triage and resource management. Good groups are simply a test of how much monotony you can tolerate.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

But ultimately, why I play Dancer and not Sage, despite liking Sage’s style and aesthetic much more, is because as a Dancer, I feel like I’m playing the game. The entire point of MMO cooldown-based combat is picking the right tool for every moment—making choices between all your actions. Playing as a Sage, or any healer, I am robbed of that experience.

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But you don't "choose the right tool" as a DPS? Every attack works against every opponent and you have your rotation to perform.

Having come across from other styles of games, I've felt like the entirety of this game is not about picking the right tool for the situation. You have a toolkit but you always use every tool in turn.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

But you don't "choose the right tool" as a DPS? Every attack works against every opponent and you have your rotation to perform.

Having come across from other styles of games, I've felt like the entirety of this game is not about picking the right tool for the situation. You have a toolkit but you always use every tool in turn.

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For me at least its "less that you choose the right tool" as that's a healer game play vs dps are fun to play in game as that's the whole point of it.

Where I get my fun as a healer IS choosing the right tool as it fits the job or correcting myself if I screw up that FFXIV denies me. Where I get my fun as say GNB or RDM is Gnashing Fang Combo and doing so while also doing my tanking duties or getting to melee combo as RDM while being mindful of my positioning and also dodging crap and/or keeping up time as much as possible.

Healer gameplay has nothing I find fun:

1. Healing the party? The frigging tanks can do that. And in most content outside of W2W pulls I'm irrelevant unless people purposefully stand in the telegraphs.
2. MP management, gone out the window with tonze of oGCD tools that cost 0 mana.
3. Cooldown management? Also going out the window when raidwides/tankbusts come up every time the same ability is off gcd because CDs aren't balanced per how strong an ability is.
4. Difficulty in healing because your healer isn't the standard burst healer? You have GCDs that are pretty much the same across the board that defeat any and all purpose of having that. Ie: Regen healers are harder to heal with because their regens cost less, their burst heal options (like cure 2) cost more and if you spam your burst heal as not intended you're going to go oom and people are going to die.

What else is there for me to have fun with in a game as a healer?

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I could yell vague minimal-input commands from the kitchen and be "playing" the game as effectively as I do from the board.

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You give me the mental image of a DougDoug style 'can I do this gaming challenge, using only voice commands' run of content. It'd probably work, too, which is the part that's probably the scariest

'Heaven On High 1-30 solo, but if I say the name of any FFXIV skill, I reset'

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Originally Posted by Iscah

But you don't "choose the right tool" as a DPS? Every attack works against every opponent and you have your rotation to perform.

Having come across from other styles of games, I've felt like the entirety of this game is not about picking the right tool for the situation. You have a toolkit but you always use every tool in turn.

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You're on DNC. You've just pressed 1, and it caused a proc of 3. You also have an unspent proc of 4 from the previous combo (for some reason). Your next combo step is 2. You need to do one more GCD before the burst window comes up (and you use Tech Step), do you:

1: press 2, and risk overwriting the 4 proc with a new one
2: press 3, and use the proc outside of raidbuffs
3: press 4, and use the proc outside of raidbuffs

You have a rotation, yes, but there are some classes with more 'decisionmaking' moments to them. Healers, who are meant to be entirely based on 'decisionmaking' moments, have none of that in their gameplay. After prog is done, you know exactly where and when you'll use each tool, and the damage side is 'do I cast Glare, or refresh my DOT', which is hardly a choice

For me, it's more about the fact I hate the idea of a team relying on me for anything beyond damaging NPCs.
I haven't really tried healing or Tank jobs for that reason.

I love playing DNC and RDM because they're nice "offhealers" if/when the situation demands it, and I still unironically think that if RDM is given an aoe heal, it'd outright replace the healer spot more often than not. What's a couple gcds lost if I help saving the party from a wipe, that's literally why I have Verraise in the first place.