Proposal the embrace the green skin.

What if we embraced the green dps instead?

Healing is always going to be either boring scheduled and predictable in a well coordinated static or wildly stressful and chaotic in something less organized like in PF

We have catered to Green DPS now for 10 years. Why not just embrace it at this point

We can strip healers of their GCD heals and replace them with a Warrior or Summoner complexity level damage kit. Keep the oGCDs around for group mits and heals (i.e. kind of like what Dancer has but more). Then Slap some healing esque stuff on their rotation (i.e. Paladin but raid wide)

People already avoid GCD heals like the plague. Let’s do something with them. Healers can reach damage parity with the tanks. Can still heal and mitigate with oGCD cooldowns. Would be required for light party healer stacks. And much more interactive to play.

For example Presence of Mind is an Inner Release and let’s you use Lily spells (that now do damage and heal the party for free) then let’s you use Misery as a finisher.

I think if this really happened I would stop playing healers especially in PF. I would be more happy if the damage is set so high as in this raid tier that you are forced to use GCD healing if people don't throw any medication. I sadly agree, like yoshida, that a healer's DPS shouldn't make him out. For me that is the plague of being a healer. And I think pure OGCD healing will cause problems for many inexperienced healers. GCD healing is there for emergencies. But I think I'm all alone with my opinion here in the forum. Luckily, Yoshida sees it that way and finally makes the constant more exciting for healers. SE is finally listening to the community so these healers aka play the WHM as RDM finally know that 1 and 2 aren't the only buttons. Even if the reaction in the PF shows that healers don't like constants where you sometimes need GCD healing.

I'd appreciate more experimental playstyles like the AST through SB had. Or the SAGE in the beginning, which hopefully in the next addon.

I apologize in advance for any healers who feel like they've been ripped off. Only I don't want to have DPS rotation on all healers. That would make me stop healing. I hope there will be some healers who understand my fear who are still post traumatic. Thank those Claric stance not healers from Hevensward.I hope there will be some healers who understand my fear who are still post traumatic. Thank those claric stance not healers from Hevensward who were overwhelmed to use claric stance properly.

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

I think if this really happened I would stop playing healers especially in PF. I would be more happy if the damage is set so high as in this raid tier that you are forced to use GCD healing if people don't throw any medication. I sadly agree, like yoshida, that a healer's DPS shouldn't make him out. For me that is the plague of being a healer. And I think pure OGCD healing will cause problems for many inexperienced healers. GCD healing is there for emergencies. But I think I'm all alone with my opinion here in the forum. Luckily, Yoshida sees it that way and finally makes the constant more exciting for healers. SE is finally listening to the community so these healers aka play the WHM as RDM finally know that 1 and 2 aren't the only buttons. Even if the reaction in the PF shows that healers don't like constants where you sometimes need GCD healing.

I'd appreciate more experimental playstyles like the AST through SB had. Or the SAGE in the beginning, which hopefully in the next addon.

I apologize in advance for any healers who feel like they've been ripped off. Only I don't want to have DPS rotation on all healers. That would make me stop healing. I hope there will be some healers who understand my fear who are still post traumatic. Thank those Claric stance not healers from Hevensward.I hope there will be some healers who understand my fear who are still post traumatic. Thank those claric stance not healers from Hevensward who were overwhelmed to use claric stance properly.

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Damage is never going to be set high enough to where both healers need to burn through all their oGCDs and dip into GCDs when a party gets good.

That isn't to say SE doesn't need to up the damage, because they do, however we still have too many redundant CDs that can be removed and replace with something either damage or support. (more mitigation options for example so it isn't so heavily reliant on dps and tanks who don't use theirs)

Also, no. Healers need more dps options. They don't need a rotation but they do need to add one or two more buttons for healers to press.

Because:

1. Being the only role in the game that gets 2 main dps buttons from lv4-90 is dumb design.
2. Healers still need to get through MSQ and it is NOT fair for me to have to level a second job for me to not be bored on my main
3. We are ALWAYS going to have down time (time spent not healing) and 2 buttons to fill that down time is boring

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

I think if this really happened I would stop playing healers especially in PF. I would be more happy if the damage is set so high as in this raid tier that you are forced to use GCD healing if people don't throw any medication. I sadly agree, like yoshida, that a healer's DPS shouldn't make him out. For me that is the plague of being a healer. And I think pure OGCD healing will cause problems for many inexperienced healers. GCD healing is there for emergencies. But I think I'm all alone with my opinion here in the forum. Luckily, Yoshida sees it that way and finally makes the constant more exciting for healers. SE is finally listening to the community so these healers aka play the WHM as RDM finally know that 1 and 2 aren't the only buttons. Even if the reaction in the PF shows that healers don't like constants where you sometimes need GCD healing.

I'd appreciate more experimental playstyles like the AST through SB had. Or the SAGE in the beginning, which hopefully in the next addon.

I apologize in advance for any healers who feel like they've been ripped off. Only I don't want to have DPS rotation on all healers. That would make me stop healing. I hope there will be some healers who understand my fear who are still post traumatic. Thank those Claric stance not healers from Hevensward.I hope there will be some healers who understand my fear who are still post traumatic. Thank those claric stance not healers from Hevensward who were overwhelmed to use claric stance properly.

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I mean I've talked at length about ways to create passive healers that can significantly decrease the amount of time they spend dealing direct DPS by having them set up their support and recovery tools and generate passive damage that they can pass onto other players to dish out. That would go a long way in providing something more support oriented in playstyle while still working within the confines of this game's combat system.

The reality though is there's no way to eliminate DPS from healer responsibilities. It would require completely redoing the game's combat system from the ground up, and that's just not a realistic solution.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

The reality though is there's no way to eliminate DPS from healer responsibilities. It would require completely redoing the game's combat system from the ground up, and that's just not a realistic solution.

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I think they can diminish the reliance on healer DPS but it'll require quite a significant rethink of Savage encounter design IMO.

If you look back to ARR/HW encounters, even fights as notorious as A3S didn't actually have that rough an enrage timer. Instead they frequently had very specific burst windows that required the group to save cooldowns to push key mechanics or adds. A3S' Hand of Pain and Liquid Limb are great examples of this but an even more extreme example would be skipping phases in Cruise Chaser or even entirely holding DPS to push the phase at a good time in SCOB Turn 7.

Moving back to these kind of approach for DPS checks would still mean that healers would likely be leaned on for their damage during these windows, but would be under less pressure outside of that.

The long and short of it is that IMHO SE need to get out of this weird situation of trying to ensure high end content (and jobs in general TBH) is logs friendly. I understand the appeal, but it's flat out strange given the ToS situation and the esports approach just isn't fun for the mainstream player.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I think they can diminish the reliance on healer DPS but it'll require quite a significant rethink of Savage encounter design IMO.

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Remember when they used to say they don't balance around Healers needing to DPS? Can you imagine trying to clear P8S with your healers just healing?

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I think they can diminish the reliance on healer DPS but it'll require quite a significant rethink of Savage encounter design IMO.

If you look back to ARR/HW encounters, even fights as notorious as A3S didn't actually have that rough an enrage timer. Instead they frequently had very specific burst windows that required the group to save cooldowns to push key mechanics or adds. A3S' Hand of Pain and Liquid Limb are great examples of this but an even more extreme example would be skipping phases in Cruise Chaser or even entirely holding DPS to push the phase at a good time in SCOB Turn 7.

Moving back to these kind of approach for DPS checks would still mean that healers would likely be leaned on for their damage during these windows, but would be under less pressure outside of that.

The long and short of it is that IMHO SE need to get out of this weird situation of trying to ensure high end content (and jobs in general TBH) is logs friendly. I understand the appeal, but it's flat out strange given the ToS situation and the esports approach just isn't fun for the mainstream player.

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If not diminish, then play around it. The main factor that ultimately goes into your GCD usage is what tool ultimately yields the greatest DPS gain per cast. When you cast Dia, you're doing so because you know you're getting more bang for your buck in contrast to Glare. When you choose Regen, theoretically, the 1 HoT cast is going to offset the potential 2 or more Cure II casts you might otherwise need to keep the tank alive, as the tank dying is going to lead to a significantly larger DPS loss than the opportunity cost of that 1 Glare. Afflatus Solace/Rapture on the other hand, are able to offset the loss of glare through the Blood Lily, allowing you to choose healing over DPS because the net gain is the same (excluding downtime windows).

So what happens when we take advantage of this logic and allow other types of tools to generate DPS in some fashion equal to or greater than your Glare or Glare equivalent? What that tool is matters a lot, because healing, for example, is still only needed in rare occurrences. If you attach it to buffs, you could end up with a much stronger healer who not only DPSes, but also is keeping an attack buff on the party, or even a defensive buff, and will that make the healer fun to play if you're just spamming 1 buff on the target?

That's why the logic I've used in my own attempts at the concept are stamping limited but frequent buffs to be activated in the future rather than as you cast the spell. You're setting up for party buff windows rather than directly buffing, and all the while generating Malefic potency passive damage that you then can give to other players to activate for you.

In 60 seconds, you have 24 GCD casts to work with, and the AST concept I worked on would make it so that a minimum of 13 of those casts would go toward support while still maintaining DPS output, not including additional tools like activating those buffs, or GCD healing that could be needed. The other 11 are split between Malefic and any additional GCD tools you might need, such as Gravity which doubles as a mitigation button in the concept, GCD healing, or activating your set buff effects.

It's not the only way we can approach this concept, but I genuinely believe it's a way we can create something that at least better satisfies healers that want to be more party focused with their spells.

I've been lurking and reading the healer discourse for some time now and I'm wondering if this proposal can satisfy both sides:

1) Return cleric stance and complexity to the damage side of the healer kit.
2) Cut the maximum potential healer damage output to half of a tank's.
3) Design fights so that healer damage helps out in a weaker party, but is ultimately irrelevant to beating the enrage.

Personally, I think this would allow for skill expression from the veterans while allowing the healers who dislike doing damage to also not be harassed since doing damage on a healer would then be irrelevant but fun.

Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I've been lurking and reading the healer discourse for some time now and I'm wondering if this proposal can satisfy both sides:

1) Return cleric stance and complexity to the damage side of the healer kit.
2) Cut the maximum potential healer damage output to half of a tank's.
3) Design fights so that healer damage helps out in a weaker party, but is ultimately irrelevant to beating the enrage.

Personally, I think this would allow for skill expression from the veterans while allowing the healers who dislike doing damage to also not be harassed since doing damage on a healer would then be irrelevant but fun.

Thoughts?

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These changes would literally do the opposite of what your goal is. Old cleric stance does not add complexity. It doesn't change Glare spam. All it does is return Healer DPS to an immensely punishing state that now heavily gatekeeps scared or inexperienced healers who don't feel comfortable taking the ultimatum. Cutting total damage output does not allow for more skill expression, it decreases it as it means you working harder has diminished returns. Even if healer DPS is lower, it doesn't change the fact that your DPS is incredibly important in increasing the rest of the party's margin for error. Fights could be designed without demanding that DPS contribution to meet enrage at minimum ilvl, but it would possibly make healer DPS even more important because now you can skip a large segment of the end of a fight with good healers.

The true problem is thus: Healer DPS contributions are baked into the game's core design, yet the designers have designed the healers in ignorance to this fact. If we simple rework how each healer is designed to compliment this, we can not only have more fun and engaging healers that directly engage with DPS, but we can also create healers who are able to work around their DPS requirements by generating DPS as a consequence to other actions, like I was mentioning above. There are a lot of ways we can do this in practice, it just requires a bit of creativity.

I did say to return complexity to the damage kit in addition to cleric stance, if dps isn't necessary to beat fights, it's not really gatekeeping, it's skill expression for the veterans. Cutting the total output is so that damage from the healer is less relevant and they won't be blamed for wiping to enrage, this makes healing more accessible at the low end. As for damage being important, of course it is, but these changes would make it less likely that a healer would be harassed for not doing any damage.

With the current design, healer dps is just 2 buttons, you have to press them if you want to be any good at healers, but if they gate it behind cleric stance and vastly cut the output, it wouldn't be as punishing to the rest of the party if a healer is just starting out and decides not to press their damage buttons.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I did say to return complexity to the damage kit in addition to cleric stance, if dps isn't necessary to beat fights, it's not really gatekeeping, it's skill expression for the veterans. Cutting the total output is so that damage from the healer is less relevant and they won't be blamed for wiping to enrage, this makes healing more accessible at the low end. As for damage being important, of course it is, but these changes would make it less likely that a healer would be harassed for not doing any damage.

With the current design, healer dps is just 2 buttons, you have to press them if you want to be any good at healers, but if they gate it behind cleric stance and vastly cut the output, it wouldn't be as punishing to the rest of the party if a healer is just starting out and decides not to press their damage buttons.

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Except you would still have the ability to do it and thus it would still be an expectation of you. Even if it isn't necessary to clear content, who do you think a party would want to have in their ranks? The healer that just keeps the party alive and contributes nothing else, or the healer that does that and allows them to skip mechanics at the end of a fight, ultimately ending the fight a minute sooner and potentially preventing any critical mistakes that could occur in that final minute? Whether or not fight design demands healer DPS, so long as it is something healers can do, it will be expected of them. Healers who refuse to engage will still be seen as griefing.

If that's the prevailing opinion, then it seems that both sides will continue not acknowledging each other and there will be no compromise, meaning nothing will ever change with the 2 button spam as there is no consensus.

If you ask for more dps complexity, there will be pushback from the side that wants to heal.
If you ask for constant healing in fights, you get pushback from the side that prefers to dps.

The only solution is to reduce the skill floor to the bare minimum of simple healing and raise the skill ceiling to appease both sides, then maybe the dev team will actually listen to our complaints for once as we have an agreement between both sides.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

If that's the prevailing opinion, then it seems that both sides will continue not acknowledging each other and there will be no compromise, meaning nothing will ever change with the 2 button spam as there is no consensus.

If you ask for more dps complexity, there will be pushback from the side that wants to heal.
If you ask for constant healing in fights, you get pushback from the side that prefers to dps.

The only solution is to reduce the skill floor to the bare minimum of simple healing and raise the skill ceiling to appease both sides, then maybe the dev team will actually listen to our complaints for once as we have an agreement between both sides.

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At the end of the day, the game is designed in a specific way. It is designed giving healers ample time to contribute DPS, therefore that becomes the expectation. That is how the game is. You cannot change that without redesigning every fight in the game to not allow for DPS opportunity. If someone is on the side of not wanting to be a DPS healer, they are playing the wrong game. It angers me how entitled some players are in believing it's their right to demand healing not work that way, and it angers me further how the developers have left healers in a shoddy state for the sake of trying to not distress that community of players. It is no different than playing Tekken and saying, why can't this be like Smash? If you want to play Smash, play Smash. If you want to play Everquest healers, then go play Everquest. Saying that healers shouldn't DPS in FFXIV is the same as walking into a Wendy's and saying "Yeah, can I get a 16" red sauce pizza with tomato and basil?"

I say this not to attack you, but to try and communicate how problematic it is to try and please everyone by directly contradicting how your game functions on a foundational level, and why they need to wake up and accept that this is the game they created, and healers will never grow until we accept this. Perhaps that means it truly never will grow as you said, which would be a shame, but that is the answer.

Having said that, it doesn't mean we can't have a healer who's playstyle redirects its DPS output into indirect methods as I mentioned before to create something that respects how this game is designed while offering a playstyle that may be more palatable to players who don't like the DPS aspect of healers, but that playstyle does still need to be built around DPS contributions, and it ultimately will still need to attack directly to some degree. I've done lots of for fun build designing within FFXIV's systems and have found my own ways to accomplish something that would work within the confines of this game. There are many ways we could create a healer that uses similar logic to create that type of healer. I think it's fine to create more unique healer playstyles that can appeal to different types of healer players so long as they continue to respect the game's fundamental design, but that's the line that should not be crossed.

Something that I can't stress enough is that embracing healer dps does not mean less healing. We could still have lots of heals and high damage. Spamming the same aoe GCD heal over and over is not heal focused anyway.

It would mean high uptime gameplay that consists of weaving a wide toolkit of heals with an engaging, varied but not overly complex dps toolkit. Being more oGCD focused would mean resource management is more important or you'd run out of cooldowns on big mechanics. Similar level of effort to a dps. To me that would be amazing.

I imagine many healers shrink from this because it's nowhere near as comfortable as spamming Medica II and Glare and being praised for it because no one died. Not because they actually want heavy healing. They'd likely collapse if healing was a high apm complex experience where you needed to constantly be managing 2-3 hotbars full of heals for an entire fight with 100% uptime. What they really want is 60% uptime and a handful of heals to be the "right" way to play.

Either way ff14 would never be able to support such gameplay due to how gear and mitigation works and a rigid 2 healer comp system. But ff14 would be able to support an engaging green dps.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I say this not to attack you, but to try and communicate how problematic it is to try and please everyone by directly contradicting how your game functions on a foundational level, and why they need to wake up and accept that this is the game they created, and healers will never grow until we accept this. Perhaps that means it truly never will grow as you said, which would be a shame, but that is the answer.

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I don't feel attacked at all, don't worry, I've been healing in this game since ARR, I know the score, I just want to see a compromise between both parties that makes us both happy, a solution that doesn't merely amount to "Throw WHM under the bus, they can be the baby healer".

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Something that I can't stress enough is that embracing healer dps does not mean less healing. We could still have lots of heals and high damage. Spamming the same aoe GCD heal over and over is not heal focused anyway.

It would mean high uptime gameplay that consists of weaving a wide toolkit of heals with an engaging, varied but not overly complex dps toolkit. Being more oGCD focused would mean resource management is more important or you'd run out of cooldowns on big mechanics. Similar level of effort to a dps. To me that would be amazing.

I imagine many healers shrink from this because it's nowhere near as comfortable as spamming Medica II and Glare and being praised for it because no one died. Not because they actually want heavy healing. They'd likely collapse if healing was a high apm complex experience where you needed to constantly be managing 2-3 hotbars full of heals for an entire fight with 100% uptime. What they really want is 60% uptime and a handful of heals to be the "right" way to play.

Either way ff14 would never be able to support such gameplay due to how gear and mitigation works and a rigid 2 healer comp system. But ff14 would be able to support an engaging green dps.

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Exactly. We're in this very bizarre state where the development team is taking a stance of "if we don't talk about it, it's not there." Which is the cause of these issues. We can acknowledge that this game is build with the intent of healer DPS contributions, and if we accept that, we can design healers around that logic to create something that's different and unique--not just offensive DPS healers, but also healers that can contribute indirectly to more aptly provide focus on healing or support.

Yea I think taking healers in a support direction is what's needed, even just small things like giving WHM and SGE party offensive buffs, like adding a Hastega effect for the party whenever you pop Presence of Mind and giving SGE a DH version of Chain Stratagem (or any kind of analogue to Chain Stratagem) since they seem set on maintaining this 2min Buff window. That and maybe 1 or 2 DPS buttons and more interactivity with their kits and their Job Gauges* and that honestly fixes most of the issue of healer downtime without necessitating a change in battle design.

*For WHM and SCH especially. Sidebar: Like why doesn't the lily gauge give the WHM passive benefits for having one or two lilies in the bank (one or two to promote the player to find ways to use the lilies so as not to overcap it and not just letting the lilies sit there while still building up to a blood lily by using them as it is now). And something equally engaging for SCH (and can we please rename Aetherflow to Stratagems or something so we can inject some scholarly vibes back into it [would just need to change the animation to something bookworm-y] Because Aetherflow and its animation always had more SMN vibes tbh)

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

So what happens when we take advantage of this logic and allow other types of tools to generate DPS in some fashion equal to or greater than your Glare or Glare equivalent? What that tool is matters a lot, because healing, for example, is still only needed in rare occurrences. If you attach it to buffs, you could end up with a much stronger healer who not only DPSes, but also is keeping an attack buff on the party, or even a defensive buff, and will that make the healer fun to play if you're just spamming 1 buff on the target?

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Going down the route of giving us more of a focus on buffing vs self DPS is something I've wished SE would trial with one of the healers for years. Even if it's just an experiment that potentially writes one of the healers off for a few years if things don't pan out. At this stage, so be it. Give us the choice and if we don't like it, we've still got 3 other healers to choose from.

It will 100% be a very difficult concept to tune well though and I'm not really sure their internal team is up to it in it's current form. Is this a good time to drop in my suggestion that SE should hire another studio in a consultancy manner again? ;)

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I've been lurking and reading the healer discourse for some time now and I'm wondering if this proposal can satisfy both sides:

1) Return cleric stance and complexity to the damage side of the healer kit.
2) Cut the maximum potential healer damage output to half of a tank's.
3) Design fights so that healer damage helps out in a weaker party, but is ultimately irrelevant to beating the enrage.

Personally, I think this would allow for skill expression from the veterans while allowing the healers who dislike doing damage to also not be harassed since doing damage on a healer would then be irrelevant but fun.

Thoughts?

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1) As mentioned, returning cleric stance is going to cause far more issues than it'll solve. IMHO It'll please a specific subset of high end healers, an unhealthy portion of which have already quit. On DPS complexity, giving back additional SB era DPS buttons from WHM and SCH would be a decent move though. As much as some people will complain about anything DPS related, I genuinely can't see any issue with WHM getting back Aero 3 and a tweaked Fluid Aura. Personally I'd go a step further with SCH and give them back their HW dots along with a Miasma II style MP/Movement dump. For AST, logs be damned, lets get back 3.2 era cards with a few tweaks to make the fodder more competitive such as switching it for a healthy DH buff.

2) I don't really see how this solves anything unless you really cut down healer's damage to the point where it's flat non existent? Healers are already at ~80% of the output of a tank as things stand. Dropping them to 50% is going to take them to ~3.5k each or 7k combined. That's still a very significant chunk of damage. Not to mention this would also make healers have an even more miserable experience in solo content than they already do. IMHO the only way SE could achieve the goal of preventing healer damage being a crutch is to simply make it so that healers can't afford to sustain their damage whilst also healing. Simply making nukes cost prohibitive isn't really the way to go as again, solo content will be a horrible experience. Rather adding a cost to oGCDs and tweaking the MP economy to match would be required. Would a more passive style of play that force standing around be an improvement? Ehhh I'm not really sure on that one. However......

3) Handily tying in with the previous point... If fights were designed so that they required strict bursts at specific windows but otherwise were generally laxer on the overall enrage timer, that could make the above idea less horrible. Enough to make it a stomachable direction? Still not sure but that's what forums are for ;)

IMHO I think switching to a Savage ethos that focuses more on quick bursts of DPS rather than sustained damage across the entire encounter would be more impactful than hamstringing healers from their DPS kits in general though.

Pseudo-cleric stances for scholar and ast (faeries and sects respectively) could be an interesting way to make them feel more engaging, as long as they were balanced to be more for optimisation than basic competency.

I'd also like to see heavensward bane and at least miasma if not bio making a return to scholar to make gcd healing less punishing. For ast it might work if there was some kind of mark on the boss that will detonate when you cast a gcd heal as a partial refund on the malefic you didn't cast, scaled so you will want to have 100% uptime on it, rather than casting it before you know you're going to need a heal. White mage needs rebuilt from the ground up because GCD healer is the stupidest concept imaginable in this game and sage needs to be deleted until someone thinks of an identity for it that isn't "discount scholar", maybe leaning in the ff sage direction as a more healing focused red mage?

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

1) As mentioned, returning cleric stance is going to cause far more issues than it'll solve. IMHO It'll please a specific subset of high end healers, an unhealthy portion of which have already quit. On DPS complexity, giving back additional SB era DPS buttons from WHM and SCH would be a decent move though. As much as some people will complain about anything DPS related, I genuinely can't see any issue with WHM getting back Aero 3 and a tweaked Fluid Aura. Personally I'd go a step further with SCH and give them back their HW dots along with a Miasma II style MP/Movement dump. For AST, logs be damned, lets get back 3.2 era cards with a few tweaks to make the fodder more competitive such as switching it for a healthy DH buff.

2) I don't really see how this solves anything unless you really cut down healer's damage to the point where it's flat non existent? Healers are already at ~80% of the output of a tank as things stand. Dropping them to 50% is going to take them to ~3.5k each or 7k combined. That's still a very significant chunk of damage. Not to mention this would also make healers have an even more miserable experience in solo content than they already do. IMHO the only way SE could achieve the goal of preventing healer damage being a crutch is to simply make it so that healers can't afford to sustain their damage whilst also healing. Simply making nukes cost prohibitive isn't really the way to go as again, solo content will be a horrible experience. Rather adding a cost to oGCDs and tweaking the MP economy to match would be required. Would a more passive style of play that force standing around be an improvement? Ehhh I'm not really sure on that one. However......

3) Handily tying in with the previous point... If fights were designed so that they required strict bursts at specific windows but otherwise were generally laxer on the overall enrage timer, that could make the above idea less horrible. Enough to make it a stomachable direction? Still not sure but that's what forums are for ;)

IMHO I think switching to a Savage ethos that focuses more on quick bursts of DPS rather than sustained damage across the entire encounter would be more impactful than hamstringing healers from their DPS kits in general though.

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You raised some good points.

1) I would actually love the return of all the old playstyles, with or without cleric stance, perhaps they can remove some of the clunk if they do bring it back?

2) I definitely did not take solo content into account when I made this suggestion. But I do love your suggestion of making doing dps on healer a balancing act of resources once again. Maybe make ogcd heals more limited, make dps spells more expensive and make gcd heals return resources? Just a small thought.

3) That kind of design worked back in HW era because their fights have phase pushes, I don't believe it would work with current fight design because it would cause a lot of the fight to get skipped because of the backloaded nature, it would be difficult to allow that flexibility again, that's for sure.

Overall, I wouldn't mind the current design if they brought back more, shall we say, activeness(?) in healing. Such as crit autos, crit mini tankbuster cleaves, environmental chip damage, random targetted bleeds/high damage, or maybe even something crazy like a boss that autoattacks 1st, 2nd and 3rd aggro, so you have to also constantly keep a dps alive. There's so much they could do, it's just frustrating that they don't.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Maybe make ogcd heals more limited, make dps spells more expensive and make gcd heals return resources?

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One idea i had for Sage was to lean fully into the 'augments it's spells' aesthetic, by making Dosis and Phlegma cost 0 MP, and instead have MP costs on Eukrasia, Zoe (would now affect damage spells too), couple of other modifier skills that would be added (maybe a 'crit chance is raised'), so the MP economy of the job would be around balancing when to power up your DPS spells vs when to chill a bit, kinda like Arcane Mage in WOW in a sense. Though I suppose this would be too much like Dark Arts spam of old

Anyway, I acknowledge the issue players have with 'if healing is more complex then ill stop healing', that complexity would drive people away. Hence, we suggest adding complexity only to the DPS side of the healers. Keeping the party alive shouldn't require rocket science degrees, that can stay as accessible as it currently is. But we can do more with the damage side of things, and possibly add interactivity between the DPS kit and Healing kit, so DPSing effectively allows you to heal without needing to drop into GCDs (time to shill my WHM idea again).

One thing I will note about the desire to 'have to heal more' however: I've done TEA. There's a phase where it's just constant damage on the raid, the J-Waves phase, a test of healing throughput and mitigation. You'd think 'ah yes, you need to heal a lot here, this is what I want healers to be like!' and no, it's quite the same as the current GlareSpam fiesta, just instead of pressing my Glare button, I pressed Medica 1. Now, there was some slight interesting things I could do, such as spending my lily heals first while damage was low enough for me to throw out the Misery safely, then using Thin Air later in when the damage was outpacing Medica, so I could easily afford to move up to Cure 3. But all in all, this was a phase based on 'more healing' and it's not that interesting. Rather, planning out mitigation as the other healer seemed the more interesting part, I was WHM my job was to press Temperance at 5 stacks. But since then I've done P8S as SGE and working out how to ration out mit for the final enrage is a lot more interesting than WHM's job there.

I had an idea, and I've asked friends but only one of them is as deep into healing in this game as me, so I'll ask it here. Anyone who has done P7S: The raidwide Spark of Life no longer has a bleed attached (the main burst of damage still hits as hard as current, just no bleed after). To compensate, every time the boss does Bough of Attis (the fist slam into punch), slamming the arena causes proximity damage from the center of the two front platforms. This means there are extra raidwides to deal with through the fight, but the ones we have currently are not as 'dump every mit on this'. Does this make the fight more 'interesting' or 'fun' to heal?

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I've been lurking and reading the healer discourse for some time now and I'm wondering if this proposal can satisfy both sides:

1) Return cleric stance and complexity to the damage side of the healer kit.
2) Cut the maximum potential healer damage output to half of a tank's.
3) Design fights so that healer damage helps out in a weaker party, but is ultimately irrelevant to beating the enrage.

Personally, I think this would allow for skill expression from the veterans while allowing the healers who dislike doing damage to also not be harassed since doing damage on a healer would then be irrelevant but fun.

Thoughts?

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I think keeping the healer damage the same is fine, or even increasing it to match a tanks. At the end of the day, Savage and Ultimate are higher end tasks in the game that not everyone can complete and that's okay. The people who complain about needing to do damage as a healer are not the ones playing in the upper tiers of this game. That's fine, most normal dungeons are fully completable without a healer at all. Hell, even some trials can be completed without them.

I think adding to the healer damage complexity is a great idea, but that should come with more damage. If someone had to put more effort in to get less results, that's going to make healers even more upset than they are. If you go and take away 2 button spam and replace it with a large kit that does half the damage, I don't think many would be happy with that. It would feel like we were punished for wanting more to do. Give healers a better DPS kit, but reward them for using it well.

I think Pnuema is a fantastic example. Its a button that does damage *and* heals! I wish it was a gain to use it, but I digress. I think that baking some healing actions into damage buttons and vice versa would be a huge improvement. Imagine if SCH/WHM bubble did damage to enemies who stood in it or if casting a heal made the next target to hit that ally take a bit of damage. It would reward smart healing with better numbers. Add some extra healing that isn't scheduled or planned to give us something to dynamically respond to and it'll be a good time.

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Originally Posted by KelTheKeeper

I think adding to the healer damage complexity is a great idea, but that should come with more damage. If someone had to put more effort in to get less results, that's going to make healers even more upset than they are. If you go and take away 2 button spam and replace it with a large kit that does half the damage, I don't think many would be happy with that. It would feel like we were punished for wanting more to do. Give healers a better DPS kit, but reward them for using it well.

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I highly disagree. Balancing based on "complexity" for healers would only eventually return us to where we are at now; within any given role there is always going to be one job that is considered "the easiest" by SE and also the community. WAR, DNC, RPR, SMN, etc. Further, I see no reason for why healers should be doing more damage than they're doing now. We were actually doing more damage than the tanks in Shadowbringers, but they changed that in Endwalker and nobody is complaining about it because the issues with healers have nothing to do with us doing 2k damage or 5k damage.

Thinking that putting in "more effort to get less results" is bad is exactly how we got here. Just look at Stormblood Scholar's 2 main DoTs, Bio II and Miasma. Bio II was 35 potency on 30s, and Miasma was 35 potency on 24s + 20 upfront potency. Together, that's 350 potency for Bio II and 300 potency for Miasma. Endwalker Scholar's DoT, Biolysis, does 700 potency, sound familiar to the 650 of the two old DoTs? Scholar is doing relatively the same output of damage it was back in Stormblood now, but it's doing less actions. However, having Bio split back into two DoTs on different timers would be infinitely more fun and engaging than SCH currently is at the moment. I wouldn't mind if the more "simple" healers were doing as much damage as I was with my "complex" kit because I'm able to have fun.

The reward for having a better DPS kit should be getting to have more fun and not having to slam your 1 key so much; it doesn't need to be more damage. A hypothetical return to an older SCH kit would not suddenly mean SCH "deserves" more damage compared to other healers with "less complex" kits, the fun and engagement is reward enough. I'm fine with the fact we aren't doing as much damage as we were doing in Shadowbringers. I'm not fine with how boring our downtime kits currently are. Hitting 5k rDPS right now on a healer isn't a reward, it's boring and I could not care less about my numbers as a healer. With a more engaging and involved kit though, that 5k number would probably feel really good. It would feel really good if it was 3k, because I would be able to know I did my best to achieve that.

Yea as much as it would make sense for healers to get a numbers bump with added complexity it isn't necessary, whats necessary is giving non AST healers their fidget spinner Job mechanics that they've been missing ever since ShB smooshed them into an AST template. But what absolutely needs to change is for the Devs to prioritize healers when it comes to design because they only ever prioritized healers when it came to stripping things away and just kinda hoping the playerbase puts up with it.

We've seen this kind of thing with the Devs before with the Gyr Abania side of SB*. When the Devs aren't super into it (on any given thing) it shows and as understandable as that is, its also untenable when it's affecting an entire role the way it has been affecting healers.

*Yoshida had gone on record saying when it came time to vision/mood board/plan for SB that the lore team was legit "Well its not really a big area so we can only do so much with it." My point isn't "oh the Devs didn't care" it's that the issues with Gyr Abania were brought up and heard and not repeated for ShB b/c there were stakeholders within the Dev team to hear and incorporate that feedback into their future writing. Similarly when BLM has an issue Yoshida himself is able to listen and incorporate that/let the Dev team know to follow up on it and come up with solutions. But I can't think of anyone on the Dev team who's willing to do so for healers and it's THAT absence I'm calling attention to. Obviously things fall through the cracks but there is VERY CLEARLY a standing order, even after all these years, for WARs to NEVER get to a point like they were in the 2.0-2.1/2.2 state that they initially shipped in in ARR (which I get, its the box art Job blorbo, its CGI dude's first Job [w/ Archer being his first class]). And I just wish a similar directive could be made for Healers in any capacity.

And aside from AST getting attention through its plethora of reworks and adjustments there's just.....none of that for the healer role and I hope its something that changes going forward. If they can make it one of their priorities I'm sure they can knock it out of the park and I say that knowing full well that from my PoV from the cheap seats there are numerous factors I'm not privy to as to why that hasn't been possible before but I think it's time they commit some time into figuring out how they want this role to be because this whole vibe from the Dev team when it comes to healers isn't cutting it anymore "Oh but it's healing its not sexy the way DPS or Tanking can be." well then be experimental and get weird with it, but this constant attitude of "Well the #'s are good so we can just leave it be and just add some accoutrements to it and call it a day" isn't going to work going forward unless they seriously want to triple down on this design and have SGE be the last healer they implement.

Like even the role in need bonus for DF doesn't even respect healers, its always tank in need even tho when i roll a tank it takes like 3mins for a queue but if i switch to healer its a instant queue despite Tanks being listed as being in need, so not only do healers get geared last in statics they also don't even get the pocket change from doing DF when they're in need. And obviously that's out of the Devs hands (aside from maybe having the role in need check be run a smidge more often) but there are things they can do to not make healers feel so.....tacked on and I look forward to seeing what they can do to tackle these issues and for w/e its' worth they still have my faith in that endeavor which isn't gonna be easy because they probably don't want to change things in a way that messes up any of the Ultimates or Savage fights they have released thus far/are in the planning stages for. Like if there's one reason for why they haven't addressed healers its because it would throw off their schedule but that's all the more reason why someone should have been on this issue 2 expansions ago to figure out how to piecemeal implement fixes to this situation with all these moving parts.

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Originally Posted by KelTheKeeper

I think Pnuema is a fantastic example. Its a button that does damage *and* heals! I wish it was a gain to use it, but I digress.

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If it were a gain in single-target (as it already is in AoE), then I think I'd call it a badly designed button:

Do I push it on cooldown, for the damage, or do I hold it for when the heal is actually needed?

Attaching healing and damage both to a button works when incoming damage is more or less constant: the heal is likely to be useful, and the damage is always useful.

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Originally Posted by Alpheus

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for df at least, its because they put an "in need" bias on tanks back in either ARR or HW (i don remember when) and they just never took it off

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

If it were a gain in single-target (as it already is in AoE), then I think I'd call it a badly designed button:

Do I push it on cooldown, for the damage, or do I hold it for when the heal is actually needed?

Attaching healing and damage both to a button works when incoming damage is more or less constant: the heal is likely to be useful, and the damage is always useful.

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I think something that refunds you for healing would be good like the lily systems. For example Using Aetherflow on healing instead of Energy Drain is a DPS net loss, but Using Aetherflow gives you fairy gauge. What if you moved the damage from Energy Drain to a spell that costs Fairy Gauge instead?

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Originally Posted by Elizasylen

I think something that refunds you for healing would be good like the lily systems. For example Using Aetherflow on healing instead of Energy Drain is a DPS net loss, but Using Aetherflow gives you fairy gauge. What if you moved the damage from Energy Drain to a spell that costs Fairy Gauge instead?

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I detailed my own take on how I'd redo SCH if I could and it basically does this in reverse: Aetherflow is used to turn your DPS spells in to stronger spells for one cast, and the Fey Gauge gives you GCD heals that earns you Aetherflow.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I detailed my own take on how I'd redo SCH if I could and it basically does this in reverse: Aetherflow is used to turn your DPS spells in to stronger spells for one cast, and the Fey Gauge gives you GCD heals that earns you Aetherflow.

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I think as long as there some form of "rebate" through the system it'd be good either way.