Actual Footage of FFXIV Healer Gamplay

Stumbled across this video of each healer going through their rotation. Figure I'd share it with the class...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRZZQLC3y5s

No surprise that Sage has the highest DPS.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

No surprise that Sage has the highest DPS.

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Lowest DPS

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Lowest DPS

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I've not been active this raid tier tbh so while I'm keeping up with the info, I'm a little curious how it ended up that way. I mean raid buffs on AST and SCH, yeah, but to my knowledge of WHM's DPS tools, it seems it's gaining its advantage exclusively from raid buff windows, being able to not only use PoM during buff windows but also prepare an Afflatus Misery prior to the buff window and squeezing out that much extra damage from it during?

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Lowest DPS

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Obviously the highest there is WHM, since the gameplay is solo target dummy dps without any raid buffs.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I've not been active this raid tier tbh so while I'm keeping up with the info, I'm a little curious how it ended up that way. I mean raid buffs on AST and SCH, yeah, but to my knowledge of WHM's DPS tools, it seems it's gaining its advantage exclusively from raid buff windows, being able to not only use PoM during buff windows but also prepare an Afflatus Misery prior to the buff window and squeezing out that much extra damage from it during?

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Yeah having misery basically just means you can pool extra glares into every buff window and the focus on 2 minute bursts benefits POM more than anything SGE has, combine that with the free weave windows on glare means that assize is stronger than phlegma and you just get a situation where WHM is just benefiting more from the 2 minute burst

WHM using Misery in burst windows doesn't contribute extra to their rdps, instead it contributes to the rdps of the players providing the buffs.

WHM started off strong this tier because it's popular, easy to play and actually about as good as AST at healing now. Great job to prog with for once. But it's already slipping at the higher end as players acquire more gear and know the fights and is settling in the second last spot. It's simply tuned a little better than Sage, but still doomed to inevitably fall behind as the tier progresses.

The issue is raid buffs and always has been. Cards and Chain scale with gear and how well your group plays. Glare, Dosis, Misery and Phlegma don't. For some reason SE monitors this with dps and SAM and BLM are both strong and tend to receive buffs if they slip, but they absolutely refuse to buff selfish dps healers as the tier progresses.

Sage being labeled the "dps healer" and being terrible at dps is rather sad though.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Sage being labeled the "dps healer" and being terrible at dps is rather sad though.

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Its a deliberate choise. The moment sage does significantly more dps than other healers. It will become the base healer for all savages unless sage gets such low healing it simply isnt capable of doing even the basic healing requirements.

Its very unhealthy for balance if sage would do significantly more damage.

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

Its a deliberate choise. The moment sage does significantly more dps than other healers. It will become the base healer for all savages unless sage gets such low healing it simply isnt capable of doing even the basic healing requirements.

Its very unhealthy for balance if sage would do significantly more damage.

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Honestly, I don't get where Sage got the "DPS Healer" label from in the first place.

When I read the initial explanation how SGE plays I thought "SCH but Disciple Priest kind of", which indirectly means healing from doing damage. I believe this and "doing the most damage" is what many seemed to have mixed up and now we are somehow looking at SGE in disgust for not being the "DPS of healers" some may have envisioned.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Honestly, I don't get where Sage got the "DPS Healer" label from in the first place.

When I read the initial explanation how SGE plays I thought "SCH but Disciple Priest kind of", which indirectly means healing from doing damage. I believe this and "doing the most damage" is what many seemed to have mixed up and now we are somehow looking at SGE in disgust for not being the "DPS of healers" some may have envisioned.

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Let's be honest, the people who were expecting "SCH but discipline priest" are also looking at it in disgust, because it certainly isn't that either.

WHM has a closer connection between healing and damage than SGE. Which, yeah, is a pretty massive disappointment to those of us missing disc priest or fistweaver.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Let's be honest, the people who were expecting "SCH but discipline priest" are also looking at it in disgust, because it certainly isn't that either.

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Even mentioning it in the same sentence as Disc Priest is an insult to Disc.
SGE has one dot, one filler spam like every healer and Phlegma. Rest is either dps neutral healing (Pneuma) or dps neutral movement (Toxikon). Nothing else. That's it. That's your "dps healer".
They failed with SGE in both departments: it's starting to fall further and further behind in dps while also having the same boring, barebone rotation every healer has; even less than some other healers and the only thing that heals through dps is your fire-and-forget Kardia.
That's a far cry from what even the most pessimistic people hoped for.

The QoL and overall flow is good, no complains there. But labelling is a dps healer is wrong no matter how you interpreted their statement.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Let's be honest, the people who were expecting "SCH but discipline priest" are also looking at it in disgust, because it certainly isn't that either.

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Touché. You are spot on.

To be honest, I think it would be interesting if Scholar and Sage played to their strengths with their mechanics.

Scholar could feel infinitely more interesting if we had more buffs to use "Deployment Tactics" on. You know - like "Eye for an Eye" used to be. Like, why not spread Protraction, spread Excogitation, etc? Of course with a mix of "if spead: lower effectiveness to x%" and a lower cooldown + multiple charges on Deployment Tactics.

Similar, Sage should play to their unique mechanic Kardia somehow, though I admit I don't know enough about what I would add nor do I know enough about Disciple Priest to give a sophisticated suggestion. Feel free to give me insight how Disc Priest worked btw, I'd love to know!

I haven't played WoW in a while but from what I've seen the core mechanics didn't really change much.

You have Atonement that heals the target that has this buff for 50% of all damage you dealt, it lasts for 15s and there is no limit to how many targets can have this buff. It all depends on how good you are at spreading it through specific heals/ shields.
Disc also has several dps buttons on a low cooldown, one of which also prevents a certain amount of damage the target deals with its next attack. You have other skills to directly heal of which some are also pretty good but the general idea is that you try to heal through dpsing as much as possible as direct heals are weaker and less efficient than spreading atonement and dpsing.

Since damage in WoW is more constant than in FF, it means that how good you are at healing comes down to how good you are at constantly spreading atonements and dealing burst damage during phases of higher incoming damage. Unlike Kardia, it's not a fire-and-forget button that you put on a target and call it a day, it's something you constantly do.
And the fact that you heal for 50% of your damage also means your healing is directly tied to how good you are at dealing damage and you can manipulate how much you heal by using stronger skills at specific times or buffing your damage with trinket buffs etc. While Disc has really good burst healing if done right, it's the type of healer that has to prepare it because push healy button and HP bar goes brrrr doesn't work.

Kardia heals the same amount regardless of which dps button you push and it's always limited to one target. And that makes it incredibly boring compared to what Disc has.
If, for example, EDosis would leave a regen effect on the target that currently has Kardia and persists after switching it, you could switch Kardia to one target, apply the regen via EDosis and switch Kardia to another target.
If SGE had different skills that are all in the same ballpark in terms of dps but heal for a different amount, it would mean you could actively manipulate how much Kardia heals. If you had a button that temporarily spreads Kardia to nearby targets, you could use that in combination with the skills that heal for more for aoe healing and control the amount you heal.
There are so many ways to make healing through dps interesting by giving you tools to control when and how much you heal but SE did none of it and gave SGE a fixed Embrace-target with fixed heal value instead.

Only Discipline Priest Healer in the game is Warrior. I'd love to see a Healer that does it's heals just by hitting the boss and their damage is same as the heals being pulsed out.

Sage is very limited in that regard where Heal potencies are only 130 off of attacks and only affects one chosen target.

A Healer that heals through it's DPS might have a more engaging kit then the limited attack options they have.

I think even something as relatively basic as being able to apply Kardia to the entire party for 15 seconds would go a long way to make it more interesting and at the same time make Soteria a lot more valuable... perhaps even a bit too valuable, 1156 cure potency on the entire party over the next 4 GCDs would be no joke.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Honestly, I don't get where Sage got the "DPS Healer" label from in the first place.

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From Yoshida himself, unfortunately.

People ran with it the moment he made that claim despite Sage being no different than any of the other healers in terms of DPS. Now I suspect Yoshida meant it heals by DPSing (i.e. Kardia) but c'est la vie. I do find it hilariously ironic the "DPS healer" has the lowest DPS output. It really goes to show how poorly balance Endwalker has been.

When they labelled Sage as the dps healer, I personally thought it would be something like Rift Chloro, WoW Disc Priest or Fistweaver.
A healer that heals a good chunk, if not the majority, either through their own or others' dps or at the very least has synergies between dps and healing spells in the sense of being able to enhance/ charge up healing spells through dps. And honestly, it' would've been a clever design for giving a healer an elaborate dps rotation while also making their healing kit interesting because many buttons fulfill two purposes at once: they deal damage while also having some form of interaction with the healing part. So instead of having to worry about where to squeeze in the dps buttons that are indepent of the healing part of the toolkit, the dps buttons are part of the healing toolkit.

Slapping a fixed amount of single target healing on Kardia and Kardia alone is so much wasted potential.
In the same way, Eukrasia is so much wasted potential. It could trim down the amount of buttons while giving decision making or interaction but it's essentially a dead button outside dot refresh or phase transitions.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

From Yoshida himself, unfortunately.

People ran with it the moment he made that claim despite Sage being no different than any of the other healers in terms of DPS. Now I suspect Yoshida meant it heals by DPSing (i.e. Kardia) but c'est la vie.

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Sadly when discussing feedback on more engaging healer dps coming up to Endwalker launch, he basically told us to go play Sage if that's what we wanted. So he genuinely believed Sage was engaging healer dps. He's that out of touch.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Honestly, I don't get where Sage got the "DPS Healer" label from in the first place.

When I read the initial explanation how SGE plays I thought "SCH but Disciple Priest kind of", which indirectly means healing from doing damage. I believe this and "doing the most damage" is what many seemed to have mixed up and now we are somehow looking at SGE in disgust for not being the "DPS of healers" some may have envisioned.

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From the group interview with /r/ffxiv subreddit mods and MrHappy:

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Mrhappy1227: Healers in Final Fantasy XIV often discuss how often they are casting DPS spells despite being healers. Often nicknaming jobs like White Mage a “Glare Mage” as an example. The Media Tour build has some new healing skills that also have damage components to them. Has the team taken any feedback from the players on improving interactivity with the healers? Whether that be more interesting DPS skills or more prominent healing requirements.

Yoshida: So I totally understand that those healers that have a very high player skill level and they’ve really mastered their jobs go into these different raids or battles and when they do have some downtime between their heals they do cast more offensive spells. Some of them desire to have more technical aspects of it so they are more active and I totally understand that sentiment. But of course the basis of a healer is to heal so I think the development team and I have this thinking of getting that sense of exhilaration from doing really good heal work.

That being said I don’t think we would do any sort of dramatic addition of offensive skills moving forward. By having these offensive abilities some players, like new healers, might feel pressured like “oh do I have to have good DPS while I’m healing?” or some players might be aggressive like “oh hey you have an offensive skill in your kit, why don’t you use it?” and I don’t think that’s optimal either.

But of course we do have the new job, Sage, which will allow for this unique gameplay where if you land an attack it heals at the same time. Or if there’s like a particular barrier ability that you cast and once that’s depleted it increases the resource which could lead to an attack which is very unique. I think players would be interested in trying that out for sure.

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So yeah, there's one source. People want DPS options on Healers? Try SGE with it's totally unique gameplay and heavy focus on attacking because it's so unique, guys.

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Originally Posted by Beddict

From the group interview with /r/ffxiv subreddit mods and MrHappy:

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So yeah, there's one source. People want DPS options on Healers? Try SGE with it's totally unique gameplay and heavy focus on attacking because it's so unique, guys.

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That quote, read in its totality, gives no basis to draw the conclusion that SGE was intended to have a "heavy focus on attacking." The job has a couple mechanics, that's it, and they're technically unique amongst the healers. (They're not unique if you include tanks in the comparison, but the topic is healers.)

If anything, the "dramatic addition of offensive skills" that everyone wants was essentially taken off the table.