Low level Healing is Boring

[Donjo]

Also, your statement about offensive spells for healers existing because of solo content is unsupportable (unless you actually do have a dev source saying this). I could just as well say that healers have offensive spells because assistant DPS in parties was part of their design. Certainly seems the case for SCHs, anyway, since they branch off of a DPS base class.

Actually it is supported as in solo content you literally cannot heal something to death. But in group content you can heal other people for them to stay alive to kill that something. Hence it would be logical to conclude that healers have their offensive spells for solo mainly and healing spells for group (and some help in solo too) mainly.

Exactly. As the presence of offensive spells on healers is what makes solo content possible for them, it's clear that "allow healers to do solo content" is a reason that they exist. I certainly can't say for sure whether supportive DPS is a second reason why this exists, but the fact that healers don't have enough Accuracy - by design - to hit quite a few endgame enemies properly is evidence against that notion.

[kuraikun]

Considering the conjuror and white mage quest line (and the scholar quest line) balancing DPS with healing is the entire point. More DPS focus for scholars, but balance is still a theme for white mage. Even that girl is told she's wrong for only healing....

[Malevicton]

Exactly. As the presence of offensive spells on healers is what makes solo content possible for them, it's clear that "allow healers to do solo content" is a reason that they exist. I certainly can't say for sure whether supportive DPS is a second reason why this exists, but the fact that healers don't have enough Accuracy - by design - to hit quite a few endgame enemies properly is evidence against that notion.

Actually, the fact that they have accuracy at all is evidence of the opposite. If they weren't supposed to hit enemies, then why include it at all? I don't understand why it's either/or, anyways. Maybe healers are supposed to be able to do damage in (gasp) both situations. I ain't a dev and neither are you, so let's chill out on why it was designed, and focus on what players can decide: how we choose to use that tool.
I use it to not die of boredom in dungeons, and also to kill things solo (though really I'll just switch jobs for solo content).

[RxRai]

No one's saying to not play however you want to or like to (as long as it's not detrimental to the other people you're playing with obviously)

I'm healing and DPSing as I type this out lol. Agreed that players should choose how to use the tools available to them though. As with the main topic of the thread, if they're bored with low level healing, they can toss out some damage spells. If they're content healing then there's nothing wrong with that really though of course a little more damage never hurts.

[Spoekes]

If you have cross-class abilities, use them. I get a lot of kicks out of Blizzard2 and Bio.

There's only blizz2 and ruin as dps spells to cross class as WHM.
noone can crossclass Bio O_o why did smb even vote this up? ^^

[Donjo]

Actually, the fact that they have accuracy at all is evidence of the opposite. If they weren't supposed to hit enemies, then why include it at all? I don't understand why it's either/or, anyways. Maybe healers are supposed to be able to do damage in (gasp) both situations. I ain't a dev and neither are you, so let's chill out on why it was designed, and focus on what players can decide: how we choose to use that tool.
I use it to not die of boredom in dungeons, and also to kill things solo (though really I'll just switch jobs for solo content).

1. Go do an Alexandrite Map(content intended to be soloed) as a healer and see what happens. You'll probably miss the enemy once or twice. Imagine how bad that would be if there was no Accuracy on your gear.
2. Energy Drain. It has utility beyond the damage it does, so it would be awful if it missed 9 times out of 10.

[Malevicton]

Edit: Eh, the post below mine says it all better.

[Cynfael]

1. Go do an Alexandrite Map(content intended to be soloed) as a healer and see what happens. You'll probably miss the enemy once or twice. Imagine how bad that would be if there was no Accuracy on your gear.
2. Energy Drain. It has utility beyond the damage it does, so it would be awful if it missed 9 times out of 10.

- I don't recall ever missing Alexandrite map mobs as either healer class. The only mobs outside of end-game content that can evade base healer ACC are Hunts, I believe. The fact that healers don't get 100% hit rates at end-game doesn't prove much except that they don't inherently DPS as well as dedicated DPS classes, which is how it should be. Besides, healers have the tools to increase their ACC if they are so inclined, so it's not a hard lockout on ACC.

- Energy Drain's utility for SCH basically IS its damage. The HP restoration isn't worth mentioning, and the MP restoration is almost never necessary.

- Not sure why this discussion is continuing. This tangent started because of the claim that the only reason healers have DPS abilities in the first place is to solo, which can't be proven except to the extent that every battle class in the game needs to be able to do some damage, and healers are no exception. The devs are the only ones who can clarify their original intent, and even if they did lay it on us, it no longer matters. The game is what it is; their original intentions, whatever they were, are irrelevant.

[Donjo]

The game is what it is; their original intentions, whatever they were, are irrelevant.

Intent is important. SE is well within their rights to determine that we aren't doing a certain thing the way it is intended to be done and then change it. The most recent iteration of this is that Ninjas were doing more damage than SE intended for them to do so they got nerfed. The Magic Defense of Dragoons was not keeping up with increasingly powerful unavoidable magic attacks. They didn't intend to enforce the lolDragoon in this manner, so they buffed them. Another example that I dearly hope comes to be true is that they've seen the utterly gamebreaking power of crafted i90 accessories as something unintended and won't let i110 accessories be even worse.

One thing I will get SE credit for is a desire not to screw with established player strategies on fights that have already been released. For example, Scholar DPS was key to the World First Turn 13 win. They might already think that makes the job overpowered, but they aren't going to screw with things to prevent it because it's already a player strategy. 3.0's fair game to mess with, however, and they'll adjust things there if it is felt to be necessary.

[Cynfael]

Intent is important. SE is well within their rights to determine that we aren't doing a certain thing the way it is intended to be done and then change it.

This is my point exactly.

What they do is relevant. What they intend is meaningless up until they take action to change game mechanics.

As far as NIN and DRG changes go, all they did was tweak gameplay once they determined that they needed to take action to encourage customers to play the game more in line with their current intention (i.e. that NIN be powerful, but not worry-free and that DRG not be made obsolete in the current meta).