The role name "Healer" should be changed.

"Healers should just heal."
How many times have we heard that by now? It's misleading. Nobody queues up for a fight just to heal. If they do, then other players doing mechanics correctly sabotages their objective- by not taking extra damage to heal, they're infringing on your playstyle as badly as a tank Shirking a deeps just before a tank buster. Dead deeps do no damage and a healer with all full HP bars does no healing. Rather, we focus on the survival of our teammates, rather than large amounts of heals-per-second.



"Healers" queue up for fights with the objective of "win the fight." Maybe they're after loot. Maybe they're after EXP. Maybe tomestones, mounts, minions, or achievements. But regardless, your motivation is likely to fall into one of those categories. Casting healing magic is but a means to an end- a tool. It is a hammer, but not every situation in FF14 is a nail. In fact, "nails" are kind of infrequent as of late. That's why I think the name of the role should be changed...


"Healers" don't just heal if they want to complete their objective of "win the fight" as smoothly and cleanly as possible. Supporting allies with damage buffs (like SCH and AST do) is one of their options, as is dealing damage. After all, dealing damage inflicts a -100% damage dealt debuff called "You Died" on enemies, which helps your teammates survive.


Combat Medic, Support, Party Survival Specialist, there're plenty of possible names that more accurately reflect the role's playstyle. We don't just heal, and leaving the name "Healer" intact reinforces the idea that "healers should just heal." But again, healing is just a hammer, and not every situation is a nail. I think it's highly unlikely that we're going to see "nails" appear more often, so I believe the title of the role should change to embrace our full kits instead.

Just call it DPSH, for DPS with Heals. Can do the same with Tanks, would more accurately reflect things to be sure.

Healer, Support, honestly just an argument of semantics likely derrived from World of Warcraft's generally different approach to how Healers, damage intake and fight design works compared to Final Fantasy XIV, intentionally or not.

I'll call it Healer because thats the terminology what the devs gave it ingame and I stick with that.

"Support" I think would be fair, though probably a bit late and kinda arbitrary to do it now.

But "support" encompasses healers who DPS and healers who buff (like AST) and other useful things that could support the party. And is probably more descriptive of the core design of "healing" in this game.

And being honest? I've always liked it.

But I feel this game's approach until maybe the current iteration has respected the general approach of healer characters in the FF series, in that if there is no healing needed then your healer character is tasked with doing something else most of the time. It also respects the FF MMO universe where FFXI your healer jobs also were expected to do other things when healing wasn't necessary. I was a main healer for my FFXI as a Scholar, Scholar was arguably one of the most complicated jobs to play in the game, it was both great for healing and DPS and I'd have to juggle the two and it was great. That carried over to here and that worked great IMO. But now the DPS side feels really lackluster and the healing side is too efficient for most content for that to be interesting.

I can't think of a game in the FF series where you're needing to only heal or constantly have a heal focus, except for certain fights.

"Healers must only heal" seems to be mentality that comes from MMO's where this is more accurate, where there is a harder push for heals. And the game isn't really designed to favour how other MMO's handle healing, so I don't understand why there are people who keep trying to push it.

I'd say something like "I don't want this to be like WoW healing" but I hopped onto my Holy Paladin whilst FF was down for patch and was like, "huh, I have a more varied DPS than my SCH on FFXIV, not massively more, but still more".

We can call it SEs green boy

Gosh this is petty.

People just need to realize that every party member is expected to do whatever is within their power to help the run succeed. This means tanks and healers contributing to damage, this means players performing mechanics to avoid unnecessary vuln stacks, this means using tools DPS have such as Feint, Addle, or Mantra to help reduce damage taken or recover it faster. A healer is simply the party member that can most effectively recover HP, a tank is the party member that takes the least damage from attacks, a DPS is the party member that deals the most damage. A role is what you excel at, not the sole thing you do with absolutely nothing else done whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

I'll call it Healer because thats the terminology what the devs gave it ingame and I stick with that.

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I'm not making an argument that players should pick a different name amongst themselves- if I were, I'd pick the "Damage Dealer (DD) vs DPS" argument, since that's much more interesting. I'm making an argument that "just semantics" has a measurable impact. It's the packaging the job comes in- if packaging didn't matter, then packaging design wouldn't be a multimillion (or billion?) dollar industry until itself.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

...
I can't think of a game in the FF series where you're needing to only heal or constantly have a heal focus, except for certain fights.

...

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I remember FF4 in particular... Until Holy, there are no damaging white magic spells (exception for Curing undead aside), but your white magic casters DO have options for contributing to the party. Rosa had a varied selection of useful buffs and debuffs. Porom could Twincast with Palom. As for other games, most of your healers have some sort of subjob- whether it's Yuna or Garnet also being summoners, or FF5/T giving you access to one other job's ability set.


Funny enough, these encounters are designed to give us room to cast buff / debuff spells using GCDs, like how Rosa often has time to cast Blink on Cecil or some of the other frontliners. We just kinda don't have any of our old FF staples to cast. FF white magic casters have never "just" healed- would be nice to have some kinda figurative sticker on the package that says "Does more than just heal!"

I mean, White Mages never just heal, but usually it's heal, buff, and debuff. Not heal and damage. There are exceptions but that's still the norm. Even the exceptions it's just that they get a lower level damage spell other than Holy.

Well, whenever I didn't need to heal/buff/support with Rosa and Garnet before they got stronger attacks (Holy/summons), I just pressed Attack. Garnet did low damage (don't remember how much Rosa's arrows did), but that was better than doing nothing.

Anyway, I would be fine with renaming healers to something that reflects their actual role of Attacker with healing and support actions. Maybe that would silent the people who say "I queued as 'healer' and thus I only heal".

Well Tanks don't just take hits and do nothing.
DPS have utilities that are not DPS-related as well.
What is the point?

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Originally Posted by Limonia

Well, whenever I didn't need to heal/buff/support with Rosa and Garnet before they got stronger attacks (Holy/summons), I just pressed Attack. Garnet did low damage (don't remember how much Rosa's arrows did), but that was better than doing nothing.

Anyway, I would be fine with renaming healers to something that reflects their actual role of Attacker with healing and support actions. Maybe that would silent the people who say "I queued as 'healer' and thus I only heal".

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Rosa is kind of a White Mage/Archer hybrid, she even had Aim. And certainly my intent isn't to say "well they should never attack", just that they should have more healing/buffs/debuffs before increasing their attack.

I'd like all the roles renaming, mostly because they don't really "fit" the world.

I know they're mostly just out of game terms and as such they don't really have to, but as it's established in game that adventurer parties do roughly stick to the roles it'd be nice if they were called something I could see the NPCs in-game calling them. Protector, attacker, supporter, something like that maybe.

I have more issue with the DPS name than healer tbh, being a damage per seconder is stupid.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

I'd like all the roles renaming, mostly because they don't really "fit" the world.

I know they're mostly just out of game terms and as such they don't really have to, but as it's established in game that adventurer parties do roughly stick to the roles it'd be nice if they were called something I could see the NPCs in-game calling them. Protector, attacker, supporter, something like that maybe.

I have more issue with the DPS name than healer tbh, being a damage per seconder is stupid.

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I agree with this a lot. Drivers aren't called MPHers (or KmPHers). I like when games try to have their own personalities. Every role could have a better name that not only accurately portrays its diversity of tools, but also gives FF14 a bit of its own personality and uniqueness.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Gosh this is petty.

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Agreed.

They can call it whatever, you're still a healer in the sense that it is your primary responsibility to sustain the group through both unavoidable AND avoidable damage. This is done via healing and this responsibility falls solely on you.

Everyone is a support role in this game, including the DPS.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Agreed.

They can call it whatever, you're still a healer in the sense that it is your primary responsibility to sustain the group through both unavoidable AND avoidable damage. This is done via healing and this responsibility falls solely on you.

Everyone is a support role in this game, including the DPS.

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Your primary responsibility as a healer is to clear the instance by killing the enemies, same as anyone else. The only difference is you have comparatively more skills that restore HP.

This might be the pettiest thread of all threads. Healer is fine as a name.

Isn’t the game about a decade old now? Even if we suddenly called the green jobs “support” that would throw the ranged DPS’s duties into question since they have heavier than average focus on buffs despite being DPS first. But Healer is so established as the term for the health replenish focussed jobs that, despite having numerous DPS options, changing it now would be MORE confusing.

"Green-tiled role that spends an excessive amount of abilities on healing that, due to redundancy in typical raid contexts, mostly just overpower themselves or, at best, simply overcomplicate a nonetheless mostly mindless task of 'see mechanic --- do prescribed thing'."

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

Your primary responsibility as a healer is to clear the instance by killing the enemies, same as anyone else. The only difference is you have comparatively more skills that restore HP.

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Spin it how you want. It's still your primary responsibility to sustain the group, and DPS stops when heals are needed. Period. Number of skills is entirely irrelevant, but if you want to go there you might want consider not how many more healing skills you have opposed to DPS abilities, but rather how many/few of those abilities you have in respect to the other members of your group.

No matter if your perspective is "I DPS until it's time to heal" or "I DPS when heals aren't needed." you're still cut from the same cloth. So please stop wasting your time trying be right.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

No matter if your perspective is "I DPS until it's time to heal" or "I DPS when heals aren't needed." you're still cut from the same cloth. So please stop wasting your time trying be right.

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By the same coin, though... she's not wrong, either.

And if it's just the time-tried question of half-full or half-empty, it seems logical to approach it from whatever end most feels pertinent to one's game experience. If, to them, that's "Green DPS" more so than "Healer (who spends most of their time dealing damage)", what's it matter to you?

:: For my own part, I'd bring a healer, except where forced anyways, when/if bringing one makes me clear the fight faster than not, and I'd prefer from them whichever behavior on average (including any wipes caused) clears the fight faster, so if they're not the same cloth, then... I'd have to go with hers instead.

The thing that gets me here is that roles in general are an out-of-character way to look at archetypes. I'm not saying "no, don't rename the group of green jobs" but if you need a lore-friendly and immersive name for your job... white mage, astrologian, and scholar are right there for you.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

A healer is simply the party member that can most effectively recover HP, a tank is the party member that takes the least damage from attacks, a DPS is the party member that deals the most damage. A role is what you excel at, not the sole thing you do with absolutely nothing else done whatsoever.

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Ultimately if this gets changed, that's fine in my eyes, but it's an inane and petty thing to go out of the way and ask to be changed. In my experience, I've never come across someone in-game saying "I'm a healer, so all I'm going to do is heal." Maybe this is just my experience, but I genuinely don't understand how this is so much of a problem.

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Originally Posted by yuumiy

The thing that gets me here is that roles in general are an out-of-character way to look at archetypes. I'm not saying "no, don't rename the group of green jobs" but if you need a lore-friendly and immersive name for your job... white mage, astrologian, and scholar are right there for you.

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What? We play jobs now? Not just slightly revised and reskinned role templates? Please take me to the past, future, or alternate reality you've descended from!

I jest, but it really is sad how much we've pushed away from that over the game's expansions.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

I have more issue with the DPS name than healer tbh, being a damage per seconder is stupid.

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Well .. i mean .. The Devs refer to them as Damage Dealers, or DD for short. DPS is a community name.

The reason why the 3 roles are called tank, dps, healer is because of the playerbase. You'd think they'd be called Sentinel, Ravager, Medic, or defender, attacker, support. It's actually quite funny because in ffxi there were no such terms. Tank is a modern term for a mobile armor with a mounted gun on a Turret. That was not the original classification SE had in mind when designing tank roles. Or how about calling dps DPS? Damage per second? That's odd
But why call your roles anything but what the masses will call them because by now the slang rank, dps, healer have already stuck as prominent classifications of roles in MMOs

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

By the same coin, though... she's not wrong, either.

And if it's just the time-tried question if half-full or half-empty, it seems logical to approach it from whatever end most feels pertinent to one's game experience. If, to them, that's "Green DPS" more so than "Healer (who spends most of their time dealing damage)", what's it matter to you?

:: For my own part, I'd bring a healer, except where forced anyways, when/if bringing one makes me clear the fight faster than not, and I'd prefer from them whichever behavior on average (including any wipes caused) clears the fight faster, so if they're not the same cloth, then... I'd have to go with hers instead.

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I never said she was wrong. Whether we should be DPSing or not is tired old argument. That's why I brought up that the two mentalities are cut from the same cloth. But some posters just have to be argumentative and express, "My mentality is right, and yours is wrong.", and I tire of that argument from five years ago because when both of us are in combat, our actions as far as the decision to DPS or heal will likely be very similar. That is why I say save your breath for more constructive arguments.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Spin it how you want. It's still your primary responsibility to sustain the group, and DPS stops when heals are needed. Period. Number of skills is entirely irrelevant, but if you want to go there you might want consider not how many more healing skills you have opposed to DPS abilities, but rather how many/few of those abilities you have in respect to the other members of your group.

No matter if your perspective is "I DPS until it's time to heal" or "I DPS when heals aren't needed." you're still cut from the same cloth. So please stop wasting your time trying be right.

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I'm not trying to be right, just pointing out where you're wrong. I understand that you aren't some curebot, I'm glad for it and happy for all the parties that get you... that doesn't mean you aren't staying something that's blatantly false, though.

Everyone's objectives are the same in XIV. We are all given toolkits with varying degrees of damage and support and it's up to us to use them as best we can to clear every instance. That means killing the enemies while allowing our party members to do the same. A tank mitigating, a dps avoiding excess incoming damage, a healer healing up unavoidable damage - they're all the same thing, they're just letting your teammates continue chipping away at the enemies.

If we want to talk percentage comparisons let's look at the number of GCDs spent on damage versus healing, or even HPS versus DPS. Outside of later Savage floors or Ultimate I'm virtually always contributing more DPS than HPS... so why am I called a healer then?

Until we can honestly look at every person in an instance and see them as equals with exactly the same responsibilities we will continue having the completely stupid healer dps debate. I don't want to contribute to that, do you?

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Originally Posted by Veis_Alveare

I'm not trying to be right, just pointing out where you're wrong. I understand that you aren't some curebot, I'm glad for it and happy for all the parties that get you... that doesn't mean you aren't staying something that's blatantly false, though.

Everyone's objectives are the same in XIV. We are all given toolkits with varying degrees of damage and support and it's up to us to use them as best we can to clear every instance. That means killing the enemies while allowing our party members to do the same. A tank mitigating, a dps avoiding excess incoming damage, a healer healing up unavoidable damage - they're all the same thing, they're just letting your teammates continue chipping away at the enemies.

If we want to talk percentage comparisons let's look at the number of GCDs spent on damage versus healing, or even HPS versus DPS. Outside of later Savage floors or Ultimate I'm virtually always contributing more DPS than HPS... so why am I called a healer then?

Until we can honestly look at every person in an instance and see them as equals with exactly the same responsibilities we will continue having the completely stupid healer dps debate. I don't want to contribute to that, do you?

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Ok, where have you pointed out that I'm wrong? Simply telling me I'm wrong doesn't make it so, and if you're unable to indisputably exhibit that I am wrong, then you best be right. However, hopefully I don't have to scream into your ear for you to get that regardless of your perspective, it doesn't change how you optimize the healer toolkit. Tell me, what am I stating that is blatantly false? Best be careful to make sure that it isn't just your opinion.

Sure, everyone's objectives in PvE are the same: Kill the enemy, and win. So what? That does very little to prove your point, as this objective is an umbrella that all roles fall under, and if you are keeping the tank and DPS from eating the floor, you are still contributing towards making this happen. However, I'm not going to go back and forth with you all day over what should be elementary basics for you; because I can tell you this, if a player hits the mat and you could have prevented it, then you're not paying attention to what you should be doing. They are going to look right at you.

If you want to go off on a tangent about being a green-DPS, then this tells me your frustration has little to do with me, and more with healer design in FFXIV.

And no, not all jobs are created equal, and a current issue we do have with the game is SEs attempts to homogenize the jobs within a given role. Everyone does have the responsibility of contributing as much damage as possible, but tanks and healers have other responsibilities as well. And we can continue this 'DPS or heals first' debate if you wish, but that is even more redundant than the healer DPS debate, which has been buried for a long time now.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

And no, not all jobs are created equal, and a current issue we do have with the game is SEs attempts to homogenize the jobs within a given role. Everyone does have the responsibility of contributing as much damage as possible, but tanks and healers have other responsibilities as well. And we can continue this 'DPS or heals first' debate if you wish, but that is even more redundant than the healer DPS debate, which has been buried for a long time now.

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Things are getting a little heated here and we're deviating from the topic, so I'll say...
You call my position petty, sure, but I ask you to look at the greater meaning. This title of "Pure healer" that we've been shackled to this expansion, after seeing a so-called "pure healer" in Stormblood WHM (which I then proceeded to not play, because I'm not into that,) is... Well, Pure Healer. Renaming the role "Healer", to fit its actual in-game playstyle, means dropping the "healer" part of "pure healer." That pretty much calls for a formal divorce from the illusion that FF14 is a game where you can play a pure healer, and (while playing a pure healer) be a highly effective member of your party. If I'm able to keep preventable deaths at 0, while also pumping out damage that shaves seconds / minutes off the fight's duration, I'm more effective, right?
Healer design principles are not vibin' with healer playstyles or healer-PoV encounter design at all. The name isn't helping. Officially changing its name to reflect its playstyle, and dropping this nonsense where everyone is forced to be a "pure healer" even when they just want to be an effective healer, would show a level of understanding not shown to the role since the dropping of Accuracy and the addition of Stoneskin II... And I think that is something sorely needed right now. Does that put things in a more understandable perspective?

Actually, rather than changing the names of the roles, I believe it would be in the development team's best interest to create additional roles to avoid broadening the current roles' definitions too much. Particularly, I think adding in a Support role, at the very least, and moving some existing jobs into it, might help fine-tune the definitions of the roles and may allow them to better balance the roles. In this case, jobs in the Support role would be equipped with a moderate amount of power in DPS output and relative power in other area(s), depending on their focus. A job in the Support role might have a secondary role associated with them.

The party make up for 4-man parties would be adjusted to 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 DPS, and 1 Support. In this case, although the overall DPS may be lesser than the original combo of 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 2 DPS, since the Support would be allowed a moderate amount of power, I'd imagine that drop wouldn't be too terribly significant.
The party make up for 8 man parties would be adjusted to 1-2 Tanks, 1 Healer, 1 Support, 4-5 DPS. I believe we've been shown that Solo healing has become something of a regular thing as of late, and I think it would be wise to push into that, both to allow healers to potentially have the chance to heal more, and also to allow healers the chance to shine. The Support will be there to help out, so there would still be a cushion for the healers, but not nearly enough so as to trivialize the role.

Regarding jobs which would be moved into the role, out of the 3 current healers, I believe Astrologian would be best suited to the Support role; this would allow them to have a greater focus on their support abilities, and allow them to become a true secondary healer, as is what seems to be their desired interaction with WHM and SCH when you consider the Sects. Leaving WHM and SCH in the Healing role would allow them to be the de-facto healers of each type of healing, while Astrologian could be there to provide a bit of what the team might be missing (if ever) or emergency assistance with healing when the Healer has run into issues.

Examples of jobs from other roles which might fit into the Support role would be Red Mage, Dancer, and possibly Gunbreaker; perhaps Blue Mage, if they could get past the whole Limited Job thing. I'd like to think that they could bring Bard into the Support role, too, but they would need to make a decision on what they want Bard to be; they can either a have sharpshooter, who happens to whistle while they work, or a Poet/singer who happens to shüt. If they want Bard to be a sharp-shooter, then they should keep the development on this current path and keep them in the DPS spectrum; otherwise, bring them into the Support role and bring back karaoke night.


...That aside, it's probably best not to change the name of the role, as anything else might give the wrong impression for the jobs, and then there's the matter of translation and making sure it's easy to understand what the job's thesis statement is.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

Actually, rather than changing the names of the roles, I believe it would be in the development team's best interest to create additional roles to avoid broadening the current roles' definitions too much. Particularly, I think adding in a Support role, at the very least, and moving some existing jobs into it, might help fine-tune the definitions of the roles and may allow them to better balance the roles. In this case, jobs in the Support role would be equipped with a moderate amount of power in DPS output and relative power in other area(s), depending on their focus. A job in the Support role might have a secondary role associated with them.

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I'm not sure how much deeper we can go, though, beyond creating role overlap such that, say, taking a turtle-tank and a high-utility-tank, or, playing tanks in those manners, over typically more efficient jobs or behaviors, and replacing one or two of your more generalist DPS picks with ones capable of supporting resource-sustain, mitigation, or healing would allow for a solo "pure healer" over two "effective healers". Granted, as long as that's mostly a matter of behavior, rather than job choice, or at least each job in a given role has an equal amount of compositional flexibility, I'd be fine with that.

But, I don't think we have enough room for an entirely new role, especially as only one or two parts of that "Support" would actually complement or supplement a given comp well enough to allow for actual diversity in playstyles. Nor do I think adding a further enforced role would be healthy for the game.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Ok, where have you pointed out that I'm wrong? Simply telling me I'm wrong doesn't make it so, and if you're unable to indisputably exhibit that I am wrong, then you best be right. However, hopefully I don't have to scream into your ear for you to get that regardless of your perspective, it doesn't change how you optimize the healer toolkit. Tell me, what am I stating that is blatantly false? Best be careful to make sure that it isn't just your opinion.

Sure, everyone's objectives in PvE are the same: Kill the enemy, and win. So what? That does very little to prove your point, as this objective is an umbrella that all roles fall under, and if you are keeping the tank and DPS from eating the floor, you are still contributing towards making this happen. However, I'm not going to go back and forth with you all day over what should be elementary basics for you; because I can tell you this, if a player hits the mat and you could have prevented it, then you're not paying attention to what you should be doing. They are going to look right at you.

If you want to go off on a tangent about being a green-DPS, then this tells me your frustration has little to do with me, and more with healer design in FFXIV.

And no, not all jobs are created equal, and a current issue we do have with the game is SEs attempts to homogenize the jobs within a given role. Everyone does have the responsibility of contributing as much damage as possible, but tanks and healers have other responsibilities as well. And we can continue this 'DPS or heals first' debate if you wish, but that is even more redundant than the healer DPS debate, which has been buried for a long time now.

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Okay, so I guess youre sold on being belligerently argumentative. That's cool, it doesn't make you correct though.

I pointed out youre wrong because, in the absolute most basic sense, you're using the word 'primary' incorrectly.

Your primary responsibility is to facilitate the victory conditions of the instance. In this game there are no instances where the goal is to heal a target to a certain amount of HP or anything, if there was everyone's job would remain the same though - to win.

You do this by using your whole kit, unless you're a lazy freeloader which we have established that we aren't nor are we talking about them.

You're just jumping to crazy extremes to try to justify your points but all this b.s. about not letting people die to avoidable damage and stuff doesn't matter since I never said that you should do that. Sometimes it is the right decision to let someone die to avoidable damage, be it because they're a mechanical detriment while alive or just a resource drain from repeated deaths. It isn't all that uncommon either. I had it in trial roulette literally this morning, a tank provoke war on Ravana that killed my cohealer and two dps with cleaves. I let the guy die so that we could get things back online then raised him once it was safe to do so. With weakness even when he would voke the other tank could take it back immediately and so we didn't have a spinning blender of a boss.

You can keep strawmanning if you want, at the end of the day no matter what role you queue on your objectives in any content are the same. Clear x room, slay y boss, repeat. It is never "heal these people" that's just a thing we sometimes do to facilitate our actual primary responsibility of killing the enemies before they get us or we run out of time.