It's time to kill the argument that DPS abilities keep healers from healing.

I've played the healer role in a ton of MMO's. WoW, DAoC, SWTOR, and Lord of the Rings Online...every one of those games boasts healers with a huge array of spells and abilities that cause and create meaningful dps. What I don't get is how developers in this game specifically have devolved into assuming the people who play healers are so utterly dumb they can't figure out in their heads when they need to heal versus cast another damage spell. It's absolutely nonsensical.

IF what they're saying is true, then people right now would STILL be struggling. Where are all these smooth brains thinking, "Durr hurr...one more 'Broil' cast, uh huh--yup," while the tank is hovering around 20% and 2 group members are dead?

They simply don't exist.
Instead what you have are a very small minority of people who shit on healers (who are likely trying) when they die in a video game.

No, it's important to close by stating that the decision to take away fun and meaningful gameplay options, because some players simply aren't very good, is asinine and I hope that those who work on healer development will realize this and add some flair and variety back into our jobs!

The Dev's as well as a good part of the Community which is more on the casual side when it comes to MMO's, genuinely believe that the ultimate form and state of a Healer, is that of a HP refilling battery. This ideology is even more present in PvP content (extremely outdated content, through) where Healers even take the form of a actual Tank since all they do is Healing and maybe fling a Dot once in a while.

And to make matters worse, from what i can tell they still don't seem to get it even with the coming of Endwalker, since they now divide Healers into what they call "shield Healer" and "pure Healer". And i doubt those will have a meaningful Kit when it comes to offensive Spells.

Scholar back in Stormblood, was almost a properly designed Healer when it came down to the amount of Dps Spells. if they added into that kit a few more Spells (not raw damaging abilities, but something akin to DoTs or debuffs which actually fit the Job), it would have been a push into the right direction but alas, all Squeenix understood was the constant moaning about everyone Joking that SCH was just a green dps compared to WHM and AST who in comparison, performed rather poorly on the DPS side, so instead of buffing those two, SCH simply got nerfed into what we know today and the rest, is history.

My biggest hope is, that SCH at the very least, inherits SMN's removed DoT themed abilities which will be removed from the latter, but honestly, i doubt anything will change.

SCH in 2.0 ARR had significantly more DPS spells/abilities than it currently has in Shadowbringers.

SCH at start of 2.0 ARR
- Ruin, Ruin II for nukes.
- Energy Drain for MP and nuke.
- Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II, Aero, and Thunder for DoTs.
- Bane and Blizzard II for AoE.
- 100 percent uptime for Shadowflare.
- Strong Fairy potency.

SCH at start of 5.0 Shadowbringers
- Broil, Biolysis, Art of War
- No Energy Drain
- Nerfed Fairy potency.

There is a reason why healers say SCH has been completely gutted and shell of itself. The dev team are extremely incompetent.

What do you mean kill it? I see healers tunnel visioning and leaving peeps on the floor all the time while they continue to DPS. Many tanks mains will tell you about where the healer just let them die. They used their cool downs properly, even went into invuln, and they just drop; then the healer will SC raise them when the mob starts eating their face.
I'm all on board with making healing fun and engaging. However, some arguments about their DPS is sorely misplaced, and I also think just giving them some additional DPS buttons to press won't solve anything. We're talking 3.x gameplay mam, which was years ago. The game has evolved past those days, and healers need actual mechanics with how their job plays; not go from 1,1,1,1 to 1,2,3,4. All this does for healers is give them more animations to look at while doing the same damage they are doing now.
No, no. I've seen too many cool reworks happen to MCH, PLD, SMN, and NIN to find just going back to 3.x or 4.x SCH anywhere near acceptable.

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Originally Posted by lulunami

SCH at start of 5.0 Shadowbringers

- No Energy Drain

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Not gonna lie I totally forgot about this.
Energy Drain is such a forgettable ability imo it really needs an updated animation or something it barely has any impact.

To say they are incompetent is underselling it. Its a laughing stock compared to the days of old. Surely, a new progressive crowd seem to enjoy spamming one button in the pursuit of nothing meaningful aside carpel tunnel syndrome - but lets not kid ourselves outside of that. People aren't playing for the engaging jobs. It's gutted to the point Diablo 2 could give SCH a run for its money.

Rather than waste your time with diatribe however; just construct yourself a bit of theory craft.

If a healer starts the game with an aim to improve, learn and be more than it was when it started. Then you examine SCH. Is that even possible with its joke of a kit? I had more out the gate at level 5 or so in past MMO's. What are we aiming for today? Perhaps no DPS tools at all? Just auto-attack for healers eventually? Thats fun is it? Really?

And thats the issue. People are comparative by nature. Nothing needs be the same - but if one has many, the other none; its hardly rocket science now is it.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

The Dev's as well as a good part of the Community which is more on the casual side when it comes to MMO's, genuinely believe that the ultimate form and state of a Healer, is that of a HP refilling battery. This ideology is even more present in PvP content (extremely outdated content, through) where Healers even take the form of a actual Tank since all they do is Healing and maybe fling a Dot once in a while.

And to make matters worse, from what i can tell they still don't seem to get it even with the coming of Endwalker, since they now divide Healers into what they call "shield Healer" and "pure Healer". And i doubt those will have a meaningful Kit when it comes to offensive Spells.

Scholar back in Stormblood, was almost a properly designed Healer when it came down to the amount of Dps Spells. if they added into that kit a few more Spells (not raw damaging abilities, but something akin to DoTs or debuffs which actually fit the Job), it would have been a push into the right direction but alas, all Squeenix understood was the constant moaning about everyone Joking that SCH was just a green dps compared to WHM and AST who in comparison, performed rather poorly on the DPS side, so instead of buffing those two, SCH simply got nerfed into what we know today and the rest, is history.

My biggest hope is, that SCH at the very least, inherits SMN's removed DoT themed abilities which will be removed from the latter, but honestly, i doubt anything will change.

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Sage seems to have everything you are suggesting and I'm definitely maining it.

healing is a lot more fun and a lot more original than this forum though js

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Originally Posted by Gemina

What do you mean kill it? I see healers tunnel visioning and leaving peeps on the floor all the time while they continue to DPS. Many tanks mains will tell you about where the healer just let them die. They used their cool downs properly, even went into invuln, and they just drop; then the healer will SC raise them when the mob starts eating their face.
I'm all on board with making healing fun and engaging. However, some arguments about their DPS is sorely misplaced, and I also think just giving them some additional DPS buttons to press won't solve anything. We're talking 3.x gameplay mam, which was years ago. The game has evolved past those days, and healers need actual mechanics with how their job plays; not go from 1,1,1,1 to 1,2,3,4. All this does for healers is give them more animations to look at while doing the same damage they are doing now.
No, no. I've seen too many cool reworks happen to MCH, PLD, SMN, and NIN to find just going back to 3.x or 4.x SCH anywhere near acceptable.

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Have you ever considered that ppl let tanks die, because their focus is only like 10% on the game? If i do anything out of savage content, the first thing i do is to cut my resolution from 3840x1080 to 1920x1080. My grouptask overlaps my skills so far, so im sometimes not even able to keep my GCD´s rolling.
As next i´m opening my browser to start netflix or amazon and check out a new film or series. Then i start to spam my damage ablities on any class, no matter which class i´m actually playing, it´s always the same and i´m normally the first. Sprint - aoe spam - sprint - aoe spam - sprint - boss pull, repeat.

It´s just boring, so boring that i´m not focused on my rotation pretty much or yes, that i completely forget that i´m healer this time and the tank died to the first adds. The games content is dull and the game never evolved, it got dumbdowned and the content is copy & paste with new graphics /animations.


I´ve played some other MMORPG´s too and i´ve never seen it happen and it never happened to me, that a tank or DPS died because i wasn´t able to heal them within 30s. Those games has better content and a way better class design.
Tanks has less defs there and a boss hits hard. Have you ever seen a boss hitting hard in this game? Have you ever seen a tank using all his defs in a bossfight? Savage tankbuster are getting invuled, in dungeons you spam your defs to pull as much adds as possible until you reach the next wall.
So what should a healer heal? The aoe which drops every 30s? Even if we talk about bad players, do they need heal? No... they most die instand, you rezz them, they die again, etc... So you stay there and spam 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1....

If the classes would be atleast somehow appealing and the content more challenging things would look way different. And i highly doubt that anyone, not matter if Tank, DPS or Heal - main, who is complaining about DPS skills or so, just wants to turn 1111 into 1234. We want something to do, something which is worth to actually use all our skills. We want more than just a Dot + 1. Not a strict rotation, but stuff we can play around, which grand some buffs / debuffs, which might buffs our healing skills or grant us stacks for playing well instead of being infight for 30s. We want to make use of Esuna, we want to play around ressources, we want to be a real healer. And between all those hardhitters across the whole group, we want to do damage with different spells for different circumstances. Even in savage healers use an aoe heal every 30s, then we´re going on with 1,1,1,1,.... while moving to a safespot. The whole combat and content-design has become a fat joke.


(And btw while i play multiple classes in the endgame, i would consider myself a tankmain. And i can tell you, that the most tanks have no clue how to play and survive properly, when to use which cooldown or even to kill a pack of adds without any healing. Especially as WAR you can easily full heal yourself even in stuff like the current E12s. Or a DRK can ignore multiple mechanic-debuffs with blackest night, or.... it´s laughable. Even my better half as WHM main wants me to play tank mostly for her 99er log.)

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Have you ever considered that ppl let tanks die, because their focus is only like 10% on the game? If i do anything out of savage content, the first thing i do is to cut my resolution from 3840x1080 to 1920x1080. My grouptask overlaps my skills so far, so im sometimes not even able to keep my GCD´s rolling.
As next i´m opening my browser to start netflix or amazon and check out a new film or series. Then i start to spam my damage ablities on any class, no matter which class i´m actually playing, it´s always the same and i´m normally the first. Sprint - aoe spam - sprint - aoe spam - sprint - boss pull, repeat.

It´s just boring, so boring that i´m not focused on my rotation pretty much or yes, that i completely forget that i´m healer this time and the tank died to the first adds. The games content is dull and the game never evolved, it got dumbdowned and the content is copy & paste with new graphics /animations.

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You're still accountable, and no one is forcing you play a healer in braindead content. If you were tanking and your healer just let you die, and their excuse was, "Sorry, healing is so boring and I got caught up in Netflix." what would be your reaction? While you might be more understanding, I'm pretty sure you would still know that your healer is at fault for your KO.

Another thing I will point out is that the tank and DPS members in your group are most definitely not looking at Netflix while in a duty, and while they have less reason to be than a bored to tears healer spamming one button, it is just good etiquette and shows respect giving them the same courtesy. And yes, I am aware that negligent people exist playing all roles in the game. Their lack of attentiveness and care does not pardon your own.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

You're still accountable, and no one is forcing you play a healer in braindead content. If you were tanking and your healer just let you die, and their excuse was, "Sorry, healing is so boring and I got caught up in Netflix." what would be your reaction? While you might be more understanding, I'm pretty sure you would still know that your healer is at fault for your KO.

Another thing I will point out is that the tank and DPS members in your group are most definitely not looking at Netflix while in a duty, and while they have less reason to be than a bored to tears healer spamming one button, it is just good etiquette and shows respect giving them the same courtesy. And yes, I am aware that negligent people exist playing all roles in the game. Their lack of attentiveness and care does not pardon your own.

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You miss my point. Ofc it´s my fault as healer, when the tank is doing everything correct but still dies. I´m not here for excuses.

My statement is, that the game itself doesn´t force anything from me in this way and there are more than enough players out there who never really focus in content out of savage. (Yes even casuals.)

- Healers spam one button 95% of all time yes. It´s either aoe into adds or that 1 cast into bosses. In case of SCH you need even less heals thx to the fairy.
- Tanks on the other hand run to the front and spam aoe or 123, 123, 123. They can even facetank any bossmechanics easily. Not even a tankbuster hurts as it should be.
- DPS do pretty much the same, aoe or 123, but they´ve atleast a handful more ogcd´s, bursts or positionals to care about. (But sadly those are more optional than needed.)

If we wouldn´t sit on wall to wall bangs with one button spam, we would focus more. If a boss would kill a tank within 5s without a heal, we would focus more. If we wouldn´t be able to ignore pretty much every mechanic in non-savage content, we would focus more. If we wouldn´t get downsynced with way too much stats, we would focus more. Or if bosses would hit an enrage, we would focus more. (Imo i can only remember that the Amaurot endboss has a limit with his platforms. But even there i´ve solod this guy lately as DRK with my little selfheal and blackest night into the laser, while my party was dead and watching 5mins.)

That´s the point i want to clarify and it´s up to SE to cater us with more interesting content and gameplay, which force more than just this one button + a fairy, benediction or a hot.

EDIT: I´m pretty sure, that nobody would complain about too less damage skills, if we would need more stuff to heal. But if we don´t have anything to heal, which is mostly the case, one button spam is no gameplay.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

EDIT: I´m pretty sure, that nobody would complain about too less damage skills, if we would need more stuff to heal. But if we don´t have anything to heal, which is mostly the case, one button spam is no gameplay.

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Have to disagree here, for two reasons, both of which are design constraints SE has imposed on themselves. The first, is healing difficulty in fights. On that front SE literally stated they're not changing their fight design to add more to that. As they themselves can't handle the healing checks. With that constraint in mind, getting to full on DPS is not only a reward for learning to heal well, but ultimately necessary for engagement, even if the developers themselves do not tune around it. Doesn't matter if it's Ultimate or MSQ, it's the glue that keeps us entertained. Recognizing its place on the skill curve and why that's the case is just as important.

The other constraint, which I hope is obvious, is that SE doesn't want to embrace healing rotations. Attrition Healing MMOs have elements of the same buff management that DPS have here in XIV, but even from ARR you can see how SE steadfastly avoids that exact design on healers in particular. Most healing actions, whether spells or abilities, are one and done. Very few are actual buffs (most of them having been trimmed because SE didn't like Critlo cheese), and many are in the form of direct potency increases, rather than percentage boosts (thereby preventing multiplicative stacking). The only thing they're half willing to give healers is some level of resource manipulation, mostly in the form of cooldown management. Scholar, despite its high points in this regard, is mostly constrained by the aetherflow timer, which dictates a majority of their otherwise more flexible kit. White Mage only has Lilies. AST has cards, which doesn't even touch on their healing kit most of the time.

That said, accounting for some level of skill-gap with a depth curve is absolutely necessary, no matter what that takes. In my opinion, DPS rotations are necessary for everyone but AST (whose card kit fits this bill, but could be fleshed out further), and adding another legitimate resource to manipulate would go a long way on WHM in particular. Lilies ain't gonna cut it forever.

I agree. Spamming broil is a reward at end game content, not a given. You have to get good enough to heal that less.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

What do you mean kill it? I see healers tunnel visioning and leaving peeps on the floor all the time while they continue to DPS. Many tanks mains will tell you about where the healer just let them die. They used their cool downs properly, even went into invuln, and they just drop; then the healer will SC raise them when the mob starts eating their face.
I'm all on board with making healing fun and engaging. However, some arguments about their DPS is sorely misplaced, and I also think just giving them some additional DPS buttons to press won't solve anything. We're talking 3.x gameplay mam, which was years ago. The game has evolved past those days, and healers need actual mechanics with how their job plays; not go from 1,1,1,1 to 1,2,3,4. All this does for healers is give them more animations to look at while doing the same damage they are doing now.
No, no. I've seen too many cool reworks happen to MCH, PLD, SMN, and NIN to find just going back to 3.x or 4.x SCH anywhere near acceptable.

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The only time healing is actually remotely fun is in Bozja where the lost actions that eat at your mp pretty hard actually mix up the boring gameplay some, and that's only really because you're doing a lot of damage.

It would actually be kind of nice to see healers get MP dump skills that increase damage and then other skills that help with recovering from the MP dump skills, but pretty sure that would never happen because it's not very sprout friendly

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Have to disagree here, for two reasons, both of which are design constraints SE has imposed on themselves. The first, is healing difficulty in fights. On that front SE literally stated they're not changing their fight design to add more to that. As they themselves can't handle the healing checks. With that constraint in mind, getting to full on DPS is not only a reward for learning to heal well, but ultimately necessary for engagement, even if the developers themselves do not tune around it. Doesn't matter if it's Ultimate or MSQ, it's the glue that keeps us entertained. Recognizing its place on the skill curve and why that's the case is just as important.

The other constraint, which I hope is obvious, is that SE doesn't want to embrace healing rotations. Attrition Healing MMOs have elements of the same buff management that DPS have here in XIV, but even from ARR you can see how SE steadfastly avoids that exact design on healers in particular. Most healing actions, whether spells or abilities, are one and done. Very few are actual buffs (most of them having been trimmed because SE didn't like Critlo cheese), and many are in the form of direct potency increases, rather than percentage boosts (thereby preventing multiplicative stacking). The only thing they're half willing to give healers is some level of resource manipulation, mostly in the form of cooldown management. Scholar, despite its high points in this regard, is mostly constrained by the aetherflow timer, which dictates a majority of their otherwise more flexible kit. White Mage only has Lilies. AST has cards, which doesn't even touch on their healing kit most of the time.

That said, accounting for some level of skill-gap with a depth curve is absolutely necessary, no matter what that takes. In my opinion, DPS rotations are necessary for everyone but AST (whose card kit fits this bill, but could be fleshed out further), and adding another legitimate resource to manipulate would go a long way on WHM in particular. Lilies ain't gonna cut it forever.

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+1

Hate spending all of my time healing in WoW. A 50/50 hybrid with semi DPS rotation and on demand healing is WAYYYY more enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by BooPoo

+1

Hate spending all of my time healing in WoW. A 50/50 hybrid with semi DPS rotation and on demand healing is WAYYYY more enjoyable.

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To be fair, you should still be doing a fair amount of damage as a healer, even in M+.

Heck, that's the very reason Holy Paladin has so often been meta.

But yes, having some healing-downtime depth would be much appreciated.

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Originally Posted by AFuzzyMu11in

I agree. Spamming broil is a reward at end game content, not a given. You have to get good enough to heal that less.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

The first, is healing difficulty in fights. "is not only a reward for learning to heal well"

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I really can´t follow you guys here. Healing isn´t hard to master and it depends more on the whole group than yourself to git gud at it. If noone fails the mechs permanently, you´re able to use that aoe heal or even just an ogcd and continue with 1. But if someone fails, those guys are mostly dead or cause a wipe anyway. If we talk about dungeons instead of savage, you´ve that fairy or regen effects. In stuff like E11s / E12s endphases, it depends more on the group medigation to survive.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

The other constraint, which I hope is obvious, is that SE doesn't want to embrace healing rotations.

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There are already healing rotations, even if you can variate slightly with them. Boss fights will always be the same timing-wise and healer prepare for that. "Oh that aoe is coming next, let´s plant a star." or "The next hit won´t hurt that hard, regen is enough." or "Tank will invul the tankbuster... Benediction! ,unless it´s a PLD. You repeat this again and again, maybe even someone dies because you´ve been to greedy for more DPS and that poor caster died, because he didn´t recieved that critheal on the aoe, who knows.


That said, healing isn´t so hard and i can´t see any reward by spamming 1. If you don´t have to heal and perform your rotation, you´ve a good group. If you can´t do that, your group will mostly suck and you need to react on the given circumstances. But in this kind, the group should become better and the healer shouldn´t carry them with LB3 or something again and again.
The content doesn´t force interactive gameplay on healers. Things don´t change immediately in a fight unless someone fcks up, not because some random encounters, hits or debuffs are getting spread by the boss. Ppl just optimize their healing rotation to get more damage out of it. Stuff like assise or the star is even used on cd for more damage instead of heal. But most of the time it does even match some boss aoe thx to SE´s encounter design.

If your group have better gear, it´s the same. You´ll heal more with more stats and they´ll get less damage. Just 2 day ago i had a tank with white level ~35 gear in aurum vale. He was experienced, but died to 2 adds just because of no stats. My fairy and shieldspam did the job, but well... i just spammed 1 heal button. In the 2nd run i got an experienced tank with equip. Eos did everything solo this time, so i was able to spam dps.

Another thing is, that the most healers either don´t know about Esuna or just don´t use it, because they would lose DPS. And the sad thing about this is, that the game pretty much never force its use.

At the end you´ve lucid dreaming... just hold it on cd and you´ll be fine with your mana.


I don´t know... for me it´s not hard to be healer in any content and i don´t feel rewarded if i´ve optimized my rotation or the group the medigation. I just press 1 more or less and this is based on other things, but not if i´m good enough or not. The only gap between good / bad healers is shown when things go down under. The decision - making makes the difference in such cases, sometimes even just a lucky heal crit.

And yet, DPSing does seem to prevent healers from healing. It doesn't take much effort to find stories about party wipes because healers refused to heal while they were DPSing; the Tales from the Duty Finder thread usually has a story about it within the last 10 pages. So yes, I can confidently say that healers are still struggling with that.

I've seen arguments that healers zone out and are bored. Thats a cheap excuse and doesn't absolve the player from doing their duty and also ignores that even when a healer had a full DPS kit back in HW, this still happened. It happens in all content and has been happening at all stages of the game. My pet theory is that most healers just dgaf. Like most things, I'm sure there's a lot of different reasons for why and at the end of the day, why doesn't really matter. That it happens regularly, is the more important factor for the devs.

Because it also reinforces the developers view that healing and dpsing shouldn't overlap; healers should heal, dps should dps. I don't really agree with them but I can see how the community has sent those signals to the devs and why the devs have kept doubling down on it. Healers let parties die while they dps, devs remove dps, healers still let parties die while they dps, devs remove more dps, and round and round we went.

If players want this to change then it needs to be demonstrated in the metrics the devs actually pay attention to, not in rants on the forum. The two ways to do that are:
1. Play healers as the devs want them to be played and play them with a level of competency that leads them to think players can handle more. (stop letting people die so you can dps.)
2. Do what the player base is already planning on doing. Abandon healers en masse to try and force the devs to rework the healers into something else; which most likely still won't include more DPS.

I don't think the boring play issue is going to be solved by a few more dps skills. If you dig up old threads from HW, you'll see players complaining about being bored, the lack of damage and the lack of dps options. So short of making them a dps class with a few heals, players aren't going to be satisfied. The bigger issue is, at its heart, its an issue with mechanics and how damage is dealt and its unlikely something that will fundamentally change. Even when the devs have made an effort to change it in the past, its only been a change of window dressing and not anything new. And they've shown they aren't really interested in doing more than that. This past live letter they went so far as to flat out state how the jobs are in 5.0 is the baseline they're going to build from and while they understand people want a return to the 3.0 style, it won't happen.

To put it bluntly, players want something completely different from what the devs are willing to build. You can fight against it, and likely lose, or you can accept what it is and try to work with it, or play a different job.

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Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer

And yet, DPSing does seem to prevent healers from healing. It doesn't take much effort to find stories about party wipes because healers refused to heal while they were DPSing; the Tales from the Duty Finder thread usually has a story about it within the last 10 pages. So yes, I can confidently say that healers are still struggling with that.

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I wouldn´t give af about some stories of guys who died and claim it to be the healers fault. I´ve never met any healer who was like "idgaf about my job". Just one time a guy who was writing in the chat "Go invul, i´ll use bene then", when i was already dying. There are a bunch of different circumstances, but the standard call when a group wipes or someone dies is like "Ffs healer, do your job!".

Just some examples:

- Tank is dying and a whitemage is going for bene. You hear it going out, but thx to input lags and a bad netcode, the tank dies.

- Same with other heals while DPS classes die. An aoe heal is no instant heal. As further you´re away from the healer, the longer it needs until the system recognize "oh heal". Or you´ve mechanics where mostly caster classes die. E12s diamond dust is a good example. Everyone is getting the same heal, nobody makes a mistake, but the RDM is still dying? Why? Because the 2nd impact is phys. damage, maybe the aoe heal didn´t crit on him, but the others etc...

- Once i was in a static and heal was a permadiscussion. They even checked logs and mimimi about each other. But ppl don´t get, that you don´t need to heal that much, when it is on point. Anyway, the MCH died and died and died. "I had no heal."... The truth in the end was, that he never stayed with the group or in any healer bubble / star, whatever. Such like stuff can happen of course, but if it happens permanently, healers are going to be like "ok, die and learn then."
It´s not all about "healers have to heal". Tanks and DPS have to use their medigation tools and should move into a bubble too.

- In case of dungeons i´m even one of those badass tank who´s running slightly in circles with big pulls. I definately get less damage while doing it, meanwhile DPS crying for whatever reason. Other tanks just stand there and eat everything, maybe even use all their defs at once just to have none left at the 2nd big pull and stay there like "healer heal pls", but hey... ever heard of casting times?

The list goes on...

The most ppl don´t put deeper thoughts in their class, other classes or the circumstances. "Healers fault" is just the easiest way to get ride of any missplays out there. A bunch of ppl don´t even recognize if they fckd up by themself, but others perform really well. And the healer is the guy, which should take care for everything in the end.

Of course not everything will change drastically when we get more DPS spells or more damage income. But the most will focus more even in braindead content. Maybe even other ppl will practice more on other classes and use their tools then, instead of relying on "healers fault" or "pls wipe" because they died.

(That some unexperienced newcomers struggle, of course... especially when they picked WHM or SCH without the knowledge what "heal-class" means in a MMORPG. This should be expected, but if we talk about endgame?! It´s the same with any other class and SE should stop acting like that´s the standard and that ppl are not able to grow.)

I just would've wanted different fairies back. So I could juggle the buffs again :x

The bigger issues I have is that the kit completely doesn’t reflect the content what so ever. Pure healers in casual content is a utter joke, and in Hardcore content it’s still not enough input damage to justify so few offensive spells. For pure healers to work they need to face damage all the time just as Dps and tanks need to output damage all the time and the content does not compliment this at all.

My best guess is the devs think we aren’t capable of balancing damage and keeping the team alive, and seeing the forums I think they have a point as why they think like this, but they literally built the foundation of the bottom line. Surely they can remake it so they aren’t as inept

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Originally Posted by Jirah

For pure healers to work they need to face damage all the time

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I thought we left the 'pure healers' back in Heavensward, along with the old cleric stance, do they still exist today!?

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Originally Posted by Jirah

The bigger issues I have is that the kit completely doesn’t reflect the content what so ever. Pure healers in casual content is a utter joke, and in Hardcore content it’s still not enough input damage to justify so few offensive spells. For pure healers to work they need to face damage all the time just as Dps and tanks need to output damage all the time and the content does not compliment this at all.

My best guess is the devs think we aren’t capable of balancing damage and keeping the team alive, and seeing the forums I think they have a point as why they think like this, but they literally built the foundation of the bottom line. Surely they can remake it so they aren’t as inept

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Blame elitist stuff like parsing/the balance etc for making it that if your dps isn’t really high as a healer you are trash mentality

What annoys me is how certain members of the community will leap on healers who let someone die during a dps cast in that one dungeon run out of 100. Or the healer who had the audacity to cast more dps while they were dead, instead of immediately hardcast raising them during several dangerous mechanics and Swiftcast only 10 sec away.

Healers make mistakes, they're human. That includes the dps casting healer who can misjudge a health bar or slip up. Healbots let people die constantly, especially since they go into headless chicken mode when real damage happens, yet people seem to think better of them for some reason because they're "trying", or assume it was their fault for taking damage, and comm them for the raise. Bad dps tunneling healers exist too but they do not represent the community. I don't see a healbot let a party die and automatically assume every healer who casts heals is bad at healing, so why do people assume every healer who deals damage is bad because of that one bad apple?

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Originally Posted by AFuzzyMu11in

Blame elitist stuff like parsing/the balance etc for making it that if your dps isn’t really high as a healer you are trash mentality

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You're bad if you aren't pressing buttons. Dps are bad too if they stood around for half a fight twiddling their thumbs because "I have to wait for my burst phase" or such.

Healer dps is just a natural result of pressing the right buttons when you can. It varies due to party deaths, healing required, co-heal experience and so on. So no one expects high dps all the time. They just want you to be doing something useful for most of the encounter while you're playing team content, the same as the rest of the group. Pure Elitism, of course...

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Originally Posted by AFuzzyMu11in

Blame elitist stuff like parsing/the balance etc for making it that if your dps isn’t really high as a healer you are trash mentality

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I agree the min maxing and overall meta heads arent Pleasant to talk to and partially to blame Why hardcore content is scarce, but I feel the casual audience is alarmingly caustic if equal to them.

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Originally Posted by Truen

IF what they're saying is true, then people right now would STILL be struggling. Where are all these smooth brains thinking, "Durr hurr...one more 'Broil' cast, uh huh--yup," while the tank is hovering around 20% and 2 group members are dead?

They simply don't exist.
Instead what you have are a very small minority of people who shit on healers (who are likely trying) when they die in a video game

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It's not a minority that struggles at every job, it's the majority. Install a combat tracker and look at the numbers for your duty finder groups.

This is how my groups have typically looked while I've been playing my "tank" character for the past month:

1 dps might be above me on dmg, maybe 5% of time both dps are above me.

Less then 20% of the time the healer is above 10% dmg.

Most healers do not know how much they can heal for as that is shown in how low they let my hps go before starting to try to heal. At that point they are panic healing and I am triggering my immunity if it's available.

Most healers don't pay attention to defense buffs to know when they are about to drop to plan accordingly. It's once again panic healing and yes the typically dps in the duty is not good enough to blaze down most packs of enemies before defense buffs start to drop off.

I could go on and on, but the typical player in the duty finder just isn't very good. That is the player base the Devs are balancing everything around.

Is this good game design? I have no idea. What I can tell you is that the server populations are not going down so people enjoy this current level of game play.

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Originally Posted by Karthunk

It's not a minority that struggles at every job, it's the majority. Install a combat tracker and look at the numbers for your duty finder groups.

This is how my groups have typically looked while I've been playing my "tank" character for the past month:

1 dps might be above me on dmg, maybe 5% of time both dps are above me.

Less then 20% of the time the healer is above 10% dmg.

Most healers do not know how much they can heal for as that is shown in how low they let my hps go before starting to try to heal. At that point they are panic healing and I am triggering my immunity if it's available.

Most healers don't pay attention to defense buffs to know when they are about to drop to plan accordingly. It's once again panic healing and yes the typically dps in the duty is not good enough to blaze down most packs of enemies before defense buffs start to drop off.

I could go on and on, but the typical player in the duty finder just isn't very good. That is the player base the Devs are balancing everything around.

Is this good game design? I have no idea. What I can tell you is that the server populations are not going down so people enjoy this current level of game play.

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I’m a day one player and tbh I don’t pay attention to any of that. I consider that the barrier from fun to taking it very seriously. It’s why I never learned how much damage I do in league etc. I reactionary heal to damage done. I don’t even think you can predict how much your heals do anyway, but in 6.0 I’ll start memorizing savage/extreme boss fight patterns instead of just learning mechanics.

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Originally Posted by AFuzzyMu11in

I’m a day one player and tbh I don’t pay attention to any of that. I consider that the barrier from fun to taking it very seriously. It’s why I never learned how much damage I do in league etc. I reactionary heal to damage done. I don’t even think you can predict how much your heals do anyway, but in 6.0 I’ll start memorizing savage/extreme boss fight patterns instead of just learning mechanics.

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Why can you not predict your healing? The tanks hps are what they are and your heals are not fluctuating by some random amount, outside of a crit.

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Originally Posted by Karthunk

Why can you not predict your healing? The tanks hps are what they are and your heals are not fluctuating by some random amount, outside of a crit.

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Boss can't even crit past Stormblood anymore anyway, so tank hp literally go down at a certain rate so you just need to heal every x seconds. I feel like people are blaming balance and optimization or raid for their own lazyness to learn.

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Originally Posted by AFuzzyMu11in

I’m a day one player and tbh I don’t pay attention to any of that. I consider that the barrier from fun to taking it very seriously. It’s why I never learned how much damage I do in league etc. I reactionary heal to damage done. I don’t even think you can predict how much your heals do anyway, but in 6.0 I’ll start memorizing savage/extreme boss fight patterns instead of just learning mechanics.

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I mean, that's what a lot of healers do, heal the damage that was just done? You only need to plan if you want very high parses (95+). Even as a scholar, a good scholar will only pre shield when the damage would kill.. so "sometimes" in savage, maybe twice a fight. By learning mechanics you realize how mostly everything is just rehashed mechanics, even in savage: what you call "patterns" are just those basic mechanics in a certain sequences or with a different skin.

And ... after 80 lvl you are supposed to know how much your heals are doing?? A heal without crit wont magically go from 25 to 50k, the same way damage doesnt randomly appear. You look once how much your heals are doing once, and most of them have the same potency anyway, so you know what they will do.

Lol the amount of people who don't play healer (at least at a competent level) is truly apparent in this thread just by looking at some of the responses. Yikes

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Snip.

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When I say healing rotation I’m not talking about planning cooldowns around a specific fight. I’m talking about taking a specific cadence of actions that is necessary just to get a more efficient outcome. You can choose to heal inefficiently and not get punished for it due to how similar most healing actions are. DPS by contrast have a nearly static rotation irrespective of the fight itself, built on setting up their full potential first then only minorly adjusting around specific needs within each instance, and if you blatantly ignore it you’re immediately punished for it. Healers by design do not have that. It creates a minimum skill requirement just to be on par efficiency wise. Imagine if Scholar had to use Physick just to gain access to its shields and/or an aetherflow action for 15s, or if AST had to land a 3 seal Divination just to be able to use Star twice. SE is vehemently against such restrictions, but those are common in other MMOs, and there’s examples of that on DPS here. Think about how that kind of restriction affects blind prog or the first-time healer experience. And the habits it encourages that only vets know how to get around.

A good example of a DPS that could be molded into a healer if not for that restriction would be Samurai. Any Iaijutsu and sen combination could produce any healing GCD you wanted. Shifu could affect healing potency. Anything that spends Kenki could be converted into an equivalent healing ability apart from Kaiten (which would be a suitable filler DPS and healing ability), and gyoten/yaten (as they’re both for positioning). Would it be fun? Probably! But SE will never make that kind of healer.

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Originally Posted by Karthunk

Why can you not predict your healing? The tanks hps are what they are and your heals are not fluctuating by some random amount, outside of a crit.

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Well they fluctuate based on level sync on content unless I just stick to level80 stuff. Am I really expected to memorize my heal amounts at max level??

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Originally Posted by Aiscence

Boss can't even crit past Stormblood anymore anyway, so tank hp literally go down at a certain rate so you just need to heal every x seconds. I feel like people are blaming balance and optimization or raid for their own lazyness to learn.



I mean, that's what a lot of healers do, heal the damage that was just done? You only need to plan if you want very high parses (95+). Even as a scholar, a good scholar will only pre shield when the damage would kill.. so "sometimes" in savage, maybe twice a fight. By learning mechanics you realize how mostly everything is just rehashed mechanics, even in savage: what you call "patterns" are just those basic mechanics in a certain sequences or with a different skin.

And ... after 80 lvl you are supposed to know how much your heals are doing?? A heal without crit wont magically go from 25 to 50k, the same way damage doesnt randomly appear. You look once how much your heals are doing once, and most of them have the same potency anyway, so you know what they will do.

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Hmm I never knew this. I just figured learning that stuff was some diamond + type league jazz and I have no intention of ever climbing pass diamond and putting in that effort sooooo…you can still clear as a reactionary healer but I guess I could learn my heal amounts somehow. Do dummies work for it?

Also I always assumed that unless the person is lower hp your heal would be less. So you could only learn if you got someone low first.

I had quite a few healers (okay, it's always WHMs) who think healing is beneath them, to be fair. lol

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Originally Posted by AFuzzyMu11in

Well they fluctuate based on level sync on content unless I just stick to level80 stuff. Am I really expected to memorize my heal amounts at max level??

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??? you can just pay attention to the hp bar as soon as you cast a heal and just remember it. cure 2 is usually about 1/3 of a tanks hp

there's no need to memorize anything

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Originally Posted by AFuzzyMu11in

Well they fluctuate based on level sync on content unless I just stick to level80 stuff. Am I really expected to memorize my heal amounts at max level??

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You can just eyeball it? That's why all skills list their 'potency' rather than their 'heal' amount. Because healing "potency" doesn't change in a healer's toolkit, and you can use 'potency' as a rough estimate to how much each heal would do after using it once.

Tetra heals 700 potency, Afflatus Solace heals 700 potency, both heal around usually 1/3 of a tank's HP, at lower ilvl it's usually more. That means I can top them off in an instant when someone drops to 1/3 HP with 2 heals. The same goes with DPS, except usually one 700 potency heal can bring them to near half HP or around 40% because their HP is lower than the tanks' Hp.

By that same token, if I can figure out ~700 potency is around 1/3 of a person's max HP, then Cure II with the same 700 potency will also heal 1/3 of their HP.
Afflatus Rapture would be roughly ~300 potency, so around 1/2 of Afflatus Solace. Then I would need 2 Afflatus Raptures to get roughly the same output as a Tetra.

Just know the potencies of your skills in your toolkit, the rest is just basic math after eyeballing a player's HP from a heal. If the heal isn't enough because you deviated too much, then you throw an extra GCD heal.

If you want to heavily optimize, you do take into account for those extra deviations to ensure you aren't wasting extra GCD heals.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

The only time healing is actually remotely fun is in Bozja where the lost actions that eat at your mp pretty hard actually mix up the boring gameplay some, and that's only really because you're doing a lot of damage.

It would actually be kind of nice to see healers get MP dump skills that increase damage and then other skills that help with recovering from the MP dump skills, but pretty sure that would never happen because it's not very sprout friendly

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In contrast I find healing fun in a variety of content and actually despise Bozja. While I will agree that spamming one button 90% of the time is boring and unengaging, I will not agree with the impression that some healers give off that the only place this does not take place is in Savage and Ultimate. And while Bozja does offer a different take into encounters, it isn't the norm. PvE as we know it in regular 8-man trials and raids is what will continue to exist into next expansion, and the one after that.

As a healer, I am the most engaged when I get to open up my kit. This is why I say just giving me more skills to cause damage isn't going to do jack to make healing more fun for me. That is why I will become dismissive and tell healers who want to do more damage to stop being a wolf in sheep's clothing, and just play a DPS job. This dev team can do a whole hell of a lot better than just giving us a couple more DPS buttons to push. Healing is a very situational role to play, the amount of DPS a healer can do is dictated by two things: their willingness to do it, and the competency of their group. With emphasis on the latter, a healer can find themselves burning up oGCDs and going into GCD healing even to dungeon bosses. While rare, it can and does happen, and that's the point.

I find that with so many healers wanting more ways to contribute to the damage pool, then it is without question the best way to reward them. As such, each of them should have mechanics that take advantage of this.

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Originally Posted by BooPoo

+1

Hate spending all of my time healing in WoW. A 50/50 hybrid with semi DPS rotation and on demand healing is WAYYYY more enjoyable.

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I like it - but that's from the PoV of a Resto Shaman pushing 20's in M+, where damage is sporadic enough to keep you engaged and constantly on your toes for that potential one-shot out of nowhere, but not enough to stop you competing with DPS during downtime - with RSham having very respectable damage. And yes, you will totally be expected to do damage there, just like you are here -- but not to the same degree seeing as high M+ is infinitely more chaotic and reactive compared to FFXIV's preemptive dance routine, where I can literally heal a stack-marker with Cure III so on time that the health bars don't even move, with me halfway through my next Glare cast the very next second.

Meanwhile, I'm just out of a dungeon where a WHM secured 58% Overhealing by doing nothing but spamming MedicaII pre, mid, and post every single trash fight and boss throughout the entire ordeal -- not casting a single Holy -- and doing maybe 1-3 glares now and then, despite the fact that neither the tank nor the damage-dealers health bars were moving at all without all that dreck. People can claim they're so bored with it that they intentionally play less effective for want of Netflix, but there are definitely people out there who obviously believe they're just a health battery and nothing more. They're as good as delaying the run for everyone else by acting like half their spells don't actually exist.

I absolutely do want more damage -- or at least a more engaging version of what we already have at the very least. I thoroughly enjoy healing and have WHM'd since ARR, but I also understand why everyone is so utterly bored spamming Glare/Holy and little else. As fine as I am with this being the 'inverse' of what I do in WoW, and have no problem spewing Glare all day long, I'm still considering swapping to tank or damage as far as 'mains' go when Endwalker hits. Not that they don't have their own problems.

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Originally Posted by RopeDrink

I like it - but that's from the PoV of a Resto Shaman pushing 20's in M+, where damage is sporadic enough to keep you engaged and constantly on your toes for that potential one-shot out of nowhere, but not enough to stop you competing with DPS during downtime - with RSham having very respectable damage. And yes, you will totally be expected to do damage there, just like you are here -- but not to the same degree seeing as high M+ is infinitely more chaotic and reactive compared to FFXIV's preemptive dance routine, where I can literally heal a stack-marker with Cure III so on time that the health bars don't even move, with me halfway through my next Glare cast the very next second.

Meanwhile, I'm just out of a dungeon where a WHM secured 58% Overhealing by doing nothing but spamming MedicaII pre, mid, and post every single trash fight and boss throughout the entire ordeal -- not casting a single Holy -- and doing maybe 1-3 glares now and then, despite the fact that neither the tank nor the damage-dealers health bars were moving at all without all that dreck. People can claim they're so bored with it that they intentionally play less effective for want of Netflix, but there are definitely people out there who obviously believe they're just a health battery and nothing more. They're as good as delaying the run for everyone else by acting like half their spells don't actually exist.

I absolutely do want more damage -- or at least a more engaging version of what we already have at the very least. I thoroughly enjoy healing and have WHM'd since ARR, but I also understand why everyone is so utterly bored spamming Glare/Holy and little else. As fine as I am with this being the 'inverse' of what I do in WoW, and have no problem spewing Glare all day long, I'm still considering swapping to tank or damage as far as 'mains' go when Endwalker hits. Not that they don't have their own problems.

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Yeah I'm not okay with the current damage "rotation" healers get. But instead of shifting towards WoW, I much rather they just add more abilities and increase the rotation complexity a bit.

If they want us to "pure heal" in this game, then the next step is to remove every damage ability healers get. It just feel so underwhelming if you can barely function without a team. In FFXIV at least WHM can pump out a respectable portion of damage during solo/dungeon. The last time I played WoW, despite disc priest being the "DPS healer", they barely output 1/5 of DPS's damage. I can't even fathom how boring it is for healers outside of raids.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

To be fair, you should still be doing a fair amount of damage as a healer, even in M+.

Heck, that's the very reason Holy Paladin has so often been meta.

But yes, having some healing-downtime depth would be much appreciated.

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The last time I checked logs Holy Paladin isn't doing a fair amount of damage though. They were doing approximate <1/5 of DPS's damage? Please correct me if I'm wrong.