Healers can't outdamage competent tanks

Had a feeling this was true - or more than a feeling, since we could inspect the logs of their absurd padding - but now we have the numbers to back it up.

https://i.imgur.com/obABQo2.png

Essentially, without extreme padding, no healer... not even white mage... will be outdamaging a competent tank.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Had a feeling this was true - or more than a feeling, since we could inspect the logs of their absurd padding - but now we have the numbers to back it up.

https://i.imgur.com/obABQo2.png

Essentially, without extreme padding, no healer... not even white mage... will be outdamaging a competent tank.

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Should they?

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Should they?

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I don't have a horse in that race, I just thought it was worth a mention with all the "OMG WHM doing more damage than tanks!" that was going around.

In other news, the sky is blue.

Seriously, guys. It was obvious from the beginning that once the real stuff hits, healing requirements go up and the padding goes to the targets that actually matter (read, DPS), healers just won't be able to outdamage tanks anymore. Anyone who believed otherwise deluded themselves.

Bit premature, don't you think?

Healer optimization depends on the entire party, tank optimization is predominantly individual. Top WHM is 200 DPS behind bottom tank. Which do you think gets a bigger increase once the entire party is BIS?

It's closer than it's ever been or could ever be in Stormblood. Besides, you don't need WHM to outdamage tanks to realise that healer damage has reached ridiculous levels. The difference between WHM and tanks nowdays is comparable to the difference between two tanks in Stormblood.

We'll see how well this ages in a few weeks.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Essentially, without extreme padding, no healer... not even white mage... will be outdamaging a competent tank.

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Whether you were intentionally trying to mislead people or not, this is just untrue. A white mage doesn't need padding to out damage a tank. All they need for the healing requirement to be low enough so that they do not have to gcd heal - something that isn't exactly a rare occurrence in shadowbringers. See here.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/rankings...spec=WhiteMage
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/rankings...ps&class=Tanks

If you think this is because of padding, it isn't. Note that the list is sorted by raid dps and not personal dps. A white mage purely doing their dps rotation properly without having to gcd heal will do more damage than even the best of tanks. I don't see how this can be disputed at all.

This was already obvious, Titania and Innocence had like 0 healing requirements.
Not gonna lie, I kinda wish it was possible for a WHM to do tank level dmg, but this is fine. Healers are a lot closer in raid contribution.

Now we wait till SE keeps buffing AST and SCH only until everything is ruined.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

Whether you were intentionally trying to mislead people or not, this is just untrue. A white mage doesn't need padding to out damage a tank. All they need for the healing requirement to be low enough so that they do not have to gcd heal - something that isn't exactly a rare occurrence in shadowbringers. See here.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/rankings...spec=WhiteMage
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/rankings...ps&class=Tanks

If you think this is because of padding, it isn't. Note that the list is sorted by raid dps and not personal dps. A white mage purely doing their dps rotation properly without having to gcd heal will do more damage than even the best of tanks. I don't see how this can be disputed at all.

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I think TC worded it badly, and referred to savage there, excluding the super-easy Primals. So in other words, actual battles that don't see healers DPS fulltime, but juggle DPS and healing. That's also what I am talking about when I say that WHMs (and all healers, to an extent, though not as much) DPS contribution crumbles when healing is required. AST and SCH are much closer to WHM in that chart also because of rDPS contribution if my assumption that this is overall contribution and not only personal DPS is right; if I'm wrong, we are already in trouble now.

Those "Padded" numbers also happened on tanks too. (all jobs get padded)
As others said, the real reason is because the content got harder, not due to padding.

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Originally Posted by MaraD_

Those "Padded" numbers also happened on tanks too. (all jobs get padded)
As others said, the real reason is because the content got harder, not due to padding.

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In addition, if the reference was also made towards Savage—it’s Week 1. These tanks and healers are currently progging the fights and focusing on doing whatever needs to be done to clear them, not optimizing them. I don’t know how it will stand either way when the time comes that raiders start actively optimizing, but we should probably wait a bit longer than 3 days after the tier dropped to make claims regarding personal damage output. These are all preliminary at this point, with no BiS and wearing entry-level gear.

EDIT: This is also a graph without much context—such as percentiles. It could be 95th, or it could be 10th. This doesn’t really negate my earlier point of this being Week 1 of a Savage tier, but one shouldn’t present numbers with this little context to try and prove a point.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

This was already obvious, Titania and Innocence had like 0 healing requirements.
Not gonna lie, I kinda wish it was possible for a WHM to do tank level dmg, but this is fine. Healers are a lot closer in raid contribution.

Now we wait till SE keeps buffing AST and SCH only until everything is ruined.

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Boo hoo SE tried balancing so my class is ruined. Make up your mind, do you want a consistent performance from all healers or another balance rollercoaster?

Bit early for this don't you think?

I hardly think the top tier healers have everything planned out optimally yet just 3 days after release you would need to give it a fair bit of time,yes i am moving the goalpost it needed to be moved to get more accurate data when both tanks and healers can play optimally not just tanks.

As it currently stands on E1S using averages, the lowest DPS (DNC) deals ~56-57% more damage than the highest Tank (GNB). The highest DPS (MNK) deals ~75-76% more damage than the highest Tank.

The percentage used shows how much the Tank would need to gain to be equal. Using the inverse of that, GNB deals ~36% less than DNC and ~43% of monk.

The lowest tank (DRK) deals ~24-25% more damage than the highest Healer (WHM) and ~33-34% higher than the lowest Healer (AST).

Using the same as before, WHM deals ~19-20% less damage than DRK and AST deals ~25% less.

This is at the 75th percentile using rDPS.

DPS role damage is expected to be much higher than Tank damage, so that difference is reasonable.

Healer damage being that close to Tank damage is quite alarming, and the gap will shrink more with better gear and improved group mechanics.

Healers get to triple dip from group gear improvements. Less group damage taken, larger health pool buffer, and increased self raw healing and damage. Tanks only get a damage increase based only on their gear.

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Originally Posted by Typhoria

Healer damage being that close to Tank damage is quite alarming, and the gap will shrink more with better gear and improved group mechanics.

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It's an interesting stance. Do most people feel healer damage should be far below tanks, then?

But if you do think healer DPS should be below a certain point, it becomes difficult for healers to complete solo duties. It already takes healers far longer to do most of them.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

If you think this is because of padding, it isn't. Note that the list is sorted by raid dps and not personal dps. A white mage purely doing their dps rotation properly without having to gcd heal will do more damage than even the best of tanks. I don't see how this can be disputed at all.

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In Stormblood, White Mage also had the highest striking dummy DPS. It was never able to realize this potential inside a raid environment, however.

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Originally Posted by DawnSolaria

Boo hoo SE tried balancing so my class is ruined. Make up your mind, do you want a consistent performance from all healers or another balance rollercoaster?

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I want healers to be both fun and relatively close in terms of balance. I'll take the former if I only have to choose one; I dealt with my RDM main in FF11 being undesirable post 99-era for a LONG time because the kit and playloop was still fun even if it was objectively worse at all-rounding than BLU and worse at CC and debuffs than GEO.

And I don't trust Square Enix to provide me with EITHER fun or balance based on prior pattern, unless it involves achieving balance by sucking out most of the fun.

Give me more improvements for every healer (preferably new moves, not "unga bunga, muh potency"), and if that powercreeps all the healers, improve all the tanks too. And if that powercreeps on the DPS, improve them too. The only sector I want to see nerfs in on healers is actually on their HEALING, because healing being too strong for the content is the root of why we focus so heavily on what else the job brings.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

It's an interesting stance. Do most people feel healer damage should be far below tanks, then?

But if you do think healer DPS should be below a certain point, it becomes difficult for healers to complete solo duties. It already takes healers far longer to do most of them.

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The damage itself isn't the concern, but moreso the conditions associated with it.

The skill floor and ceiling for healer DPS is inexistent. DoT + oGCD damage into spam cast damage ability repeat.

Healers have minimal to no risk while using their damage spells. While potency isn't too comparable, look at Scholar Biolysis it's a 60 potency instant DoT for 400 MP. Summoner Bio is 40 potency DoT for 600 MP and Miasma III is 40 + 40 potency DoT for 500 MP with a 2.5sec cast.
Broil III is an unconditional 280 potency, while a Summoner has to have both Bio and Miasma for Ruin III to have 200 potency.

Just did a test where my melded 449 Gunbreaker used Blasting Zone, 800 potency 30s CD, with Titania weapon. The damage was 17k. Swapped to my unmelded 420 White Mage, with 418 weapon from last dungeon, used Assize, 400 potency AoE damage + Heal + 5% MP regain 45s CD, for 17.5k on each target hit.

It's just a bit silly when a Healer can do those kinds of numbers without it being complicated or being very taxing on their resources. Meanwhile, the only DPS function that separates Tanks from actual melee DPS jobs are positionals.

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Originally Posted by Typhoria

The skill floor and ceiling for healer DPS is inexistent. DoT + oGCD damage into spam cast damage ability repeat.

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There is a skill gap when you're fighting something that's not a striking dummy or has close to no outgoing damage. What separates the good/mediocre/bad is not the complexity of the rotation, but the ability to balance DPS with healing and manage your GCDs.

That said, healers already do less than half the damage of top DPS. So, exactly how little do you think they should do? 25%? Even less? You keep nerfing healer DPS and, again, you run into problems where healers would have difficulty doing solo duties (When it's already tedious and time consuming on some of them).

Lastly, tanks have it a lot easier than melee DPS. They're punished much less for eating avoidable damage, and have more tools to compensate should it happen. And now they even have gap closers too. Enmity has become gutted and braindead too, so there's no management aspect to tanks a la healers having to choose between healing and DPS.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

There is a skill gap when you're fighting something that's not a striking dummy or has close to no outgoing damage. What separates the good/mediocre/bad is not the complexity of the rotation, but the ability to balance DPS with healing and manage your GCDs.

That said, healers already do less than half the damage of top DPS. So, exactly how little do you think they should do? 25%? Even less? You keep nerfing healer DPS and, again, you run into problems where healers would have difficulty doing solo duties (When it's already tedious and time consuming on some of them).

Lastly, tanks have it a lot easier than melee DPS. They're punished much less for eating avoidable damage, and have more tools to compensate should it happen. And now they even have gap closers too. Enmity has become gutted and braindead too, so there's no management aspect to tanks a la healers having to choose between healing and DPS.

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I didn't say they should reduce the damage. Don't quote one part if you are going to willfully ignore a part so you can strawman.

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Originally Posted by Typhoria

The damage itself isn't the concern, but moreso the conditions associated with it.

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Healers are the only job that has increased damage when the group makes less errors. There are no surprises in fights when everyone is properly playing.

Healer damage abilities aren't engaging, there is no way to improve when there is downtime. The idea of Cleric Stance, before it was changed and later removed, was a good start to actually engage Healers while DPSing.

Let's see...

To tank, you need to hit mob.

To heal, you need to cast healing spell and not damage spell; which means you stopped dpsing.

Mind blown.

Is it too logical to think that tank should should always deal higher damage than healer?

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Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

And I don't trust Square Enix to provide me with EITHER fun or balance based on prior pattern, unless it involves achieving balance by sucking out most of the fun.

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Flubs and all I'd still trust them over the legion of half baked forum 'experts' running around here.

using first week prog clears to say healers cant out dps tanks is very foolish people are playing safe for prog as we clear more healer damage is gonna go up and up while tanks wont go up as hard since they dont have anything like reducing healing gcds to boost their dps as much

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Originally Posted by Typhoria

The damage itself isn't the concern, but moreso the conditions associated with it.

The skill floor and ceiling for healer DPS is inexistent. DoT + oGCD damage into spam cast damage ability repeat.

Healers have minimal to no risk while using their damage spells. While potency isn't too comparable, look at Scholar Biolysis it's a 60 potency instant DoT for 400 MP. Summoner Bio is 40 potency DoT for 600 MP and Miasma III is 40 + 40 potency DoT for 500 MP with a 2.5sec cast.
Broil III is an unconditional 280 potency, while a Summoner has to have both Bio and Miasma for Ruin III to have 200 potency.

Just did a test where my melded 449 Gunbreaker used Blasting Zone, 800 potency 30s CD, with Titania weapon. The damage was 17k. Swapped to my unmelded 420 White Mage, with 418 weapon from last dungeon, used Assize, 400 potency AoE damage + Heal + 5% MP regain 45s CD, for 17.5k on each target hit.

It's just a bit silly when a Healer can do those kinds of numbers without it being complicated or being very taxing on their resources. Meanwhile, the only DPS function that separates Tanks from actual melee DPS jobs are positionals.

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Have you ever raided with a healer? Cuz from what you said I don't think so.

No, there are no dps rotations on a healer, the skill comes in the mixing of healing and dpsing, using all the oGCDs to free up GCDs for dpsing, but at the same time knowing the fight so you have them saved up when necessary. Then you have the random oh crap moments where folks are taking needless dmg or dying. I will grant you that as the boss fight moves to farm status, the opportunity for dpsing increases decently. Though everyone's dps improves in that case as they learns how to maximize up time on the boss, rotations are easier to keep up etc.

Lets talk tanks? Are you telling me there is some kind of amazing button pushing going on for off tanks, tanks were made even easier as not much stance dancing anymore, just swapping stance when boss swapping. You are off tanking? do your dps rotation (which isn't that hard). Tanking? do your dps rotation while using cooldowns appropriately.

I think looking at the difference between the the 75% and the 25% is interesting as that shows the difference between the very good and not as good.

Would I like there to be a different damage model where more healing was required, yes I would. That isn't going to happen though, least not this expansion. Why shouldn't a very good healer, who is excellent at managing oGCDs , dps uptime etc do alright dps? They can't just nerf dps as there is more being done than savage raids. They could up the incoming damage so there isn't as much time to dps, though they would have to adjust our mana pool etc...

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Originally Posted by ElroyDrundan

Have you ever raided with a healer? Cuz from what you said I don't think so.

No, there are no dps rotations on a healer, the skill comes in the mixing of healing and dpsing, using all the oGCDs to free up GCDs for dpsing, but at the same time knowing the fight so you have them saved up when necessary. Then you have the random oh crap moments where folks are taking needless dmg or dying. I will grant you that as the boss fight moves to farm status, the opportunity for dpsing increases decently. Though everyone's dps improves in that case as they learns how to maximize up time on the boss, rotations are easier to keep up etc.

Lets talk tanks? Are you telling me there is some kind of amazing button pushing going on for off tanks, tanks were made even easier as not much stance dancing anymore, just swapping stance when boss swapping. You are off tanking? do your dps rotation (which isn't that hard). Tanking? do your dps rotation while using cooldowns appropriately.

I think looking at the difference between the the 75% and the 25% is interesting as that shows the difference between the very good and not as good.

Would I like there to be a different damage model where more healing was required, yes I would. That isn't going to happen though, least not this expansion. Why shouldn't a very good healer, who is excellent at managing oGCDs , dps uptime etc do alright dps? They can't just nerf dps as there is more being done than savage raids. They could up the incoming damage so there isn't as much time to dps, though they would have to adjust our mana pool etc...

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I have raided as a healer, and while SB SCH didn't have the most complex rotation in the world, it felt better to use that in alphascape than it feels to use broil x infinity in Eden.

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Originally Posted by Typhoria

The damage itself isn't the concern, but moreso the conditions associated with it.

The skill floor and ceiling for healer DPS is inexistent. DoT + oGCD damage into spam cast damage ability repeat.

Healers have minimal to no risk while using their damage spells. While potency isn't too comparable, look at Scholar Biolysis it's a 60 potency instant DoT for 400 MP. Summoner Bio is 40 potency DoT for 600 MP and Miasma III is 40 + 40 potency DoT for 500 MP with a 2.5sec cast.

It's just a bit silly when a Healer can do those kinds of numbers without it being complicated or being very taxing on their resources. Meanwhile, the only DPS function that separates Tanks from actual melee DPS jobs are positionals.

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No, the damage itself is the concern, as a principle. Healers are closer in DPS to tanks than ever before and gear will only close that gap. I think healer DPS should be lower simply out of concern for encounter DPS checks.

As for skill floor and skill ceiling, of course they exist. You would know if you played any caster to a decent enough level. Since you went ahead and insulted healers like that, Mr. easy mode melee DPS with tank privilege, let me condescendingly explain to you how casting/healing works.

• Casting a spell commits you to 2.5 seconds of no movement. If you interrupt your cast, you have lost that GCD. How do you optimize this? By optimizing movement, of course. How do you do this? By knowing how long it takes for that AoE to go off in order to decide if you can get away with a slidecast. By knowing the fight well enough to pre-position for any fixed-location AoE and future movement.
• Casting a 2.5 second spell takes an entire GCD. Shocking, I know. This means you can't just willy nilly throw out your OGCDs as if you were a tank. What does this mean for healers? Well, you know that massive raidwide that brought us all to 10% HP? Yeah, that one. My Biolysis is expiring in 6 seconds. Can I get away with delaying my OGCD heals until I have to refresh it, so I can weave them in without clipping my GCD or losing DPS with Ruin II?
• Speaking of weaving, let me just Ruin II + Energy Drain + select tank + Excog + select boss in 1 GCD, otherwise I'm delaying my next GCD. I know that quickly switching targets is taken for granted and doesn't even come to mind when you only have to care about one target for 99% of the fight. The only reason I bring this up is because it is mechanically more complex than any weaving any other job has to do (Well, tanks do it too. Once or twice per fight... Potentially. Do tanks even Shirk anymore after they trivialized enmity?).
• Speaking of healing, can I get rid of this one Succor safely and replace it with Broil for extra DPS? Oh hey, my co-healer has an ability that would simplify this and allow both of us to get an extra DPS GCD in. We should plan out our pool of abilities for this encounter. Gee, sometimes I wish I was a tank ... just doing my "high skill ceiling" rotation, not depending on others for my performance, not having to interrupt everything because some idiot DPS or tank didn't dodge or forgot a cooldown.

Think about that while you slide freely around the boss doing your dummy rotation.
Here's a secret: doing your rotation is not the skill ceiling, it's the minimum requirement. Maximizing DPS uptime is what everyone has to do in order to approach the skill ceiling.

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Originally Posted by Typhoria

Healer damage abilities aren't engaging, there is no way to improve when there is downtime.

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And there is for tanks or DPS? As far as I can tell, boss mechanic downtime is literally a dummy phase for any job.

In addition to that, healer has another type of downtime - healing downtime. And that you can improve. By creating it.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

In Stormblood, White Mage also had the highest striking dummy DPS. It was never able to realize this potential inside a raid environment, however.

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Then this kind of contradicts your initial post, doesn't it? Posting this a few days after savage is released also doesn't mean much, especially when the fights are not even close to optimized yet. How do you know that this will remain true once people have more gear + experience with the current savage fights?

I don't know where this idea came from that healers have to be doing less than tanks.
Healers will naturally do less DPS because they can't always hit the boss, abd that's fine, but I think it's an issue when people look at a healer DPSing for more than a tank is a problem.