Paradigm shifting for healer needs to be fixed.

[Fevelle]

You anger is misdirected. That is the collective attitude because that is the way this game is. In even the hardest encounters in FFXIV, there isn't enough tank and raid damage to keep healers occupied healing fulltime. So instead of doing nothing, or overhealing, good gameplay dictates they move down their priority order and dps until they need to heal again. We don't make the game, we just play it, and that's how it is. It is always healers main job to keep everyone alive. Always. But in this game, it is very possible to keep everyone alive while adding meaningful DPS to the encounter.

If you don't like it, blame SE for not tailoring the healing meta to your liking. But you can't really blame the players for trying to be, and wanting their teammates to try and be, the best teammates possible.

I blame them for creating an enviroment to please raiding, migrating WoW players and forgetting about core FF fans.

[Sidra]

I dunno - I never played WOW, and this and FFXI have been the only MMO's I have spent considerable time in. Final Fantasy memories way back to the first one, and I am 36 years old. I find healing in this game different than in many other games, but extremely fun and engaging. And I know there are a lot of other players who don't fit your description who feel the same.

Intelligent minds can disagree. It's immature to attach a negative stigma to people who feel differently than you do.

[Fevelle]

I dunno - I never played WOW, and this and FFXI have been the only MMO's I have spent considerable time in. Final Fantasy memories way back to the first one, and I am 36 years old. I find healing in this game different than in many other games, but extremely fun and engaging. And I know there are a lot of other players who don't fit your description who feel the same.

Intelligent minds can disagree. It's immature to attach a negative stigma to people who feel differently than you do.

So you do agree this is not a FF-esque setting for healing, right?

[Phileas]

I can understand from a mmo perspective it can be hard to make healing sexy. It is why mmo like guild wars got rid of the trinity. Adding some dps adds a bit of spice to the healing mix. Some love it, some hate it. I just see it as something to do in downtime.

[Sidra]

Yes it is different than in FFXI (the only other FF MMO). But I am not sure that's a good argument for it being bad. I mean, where are my HNMs to camp for hours upon hours for a tiny chance of my item to drop? Where are my xp parties where we go grind on monsters to level up? "Dammit this game isn't final fantasy esque!!"

It is different, I will give you that. Some people like it and some people don't. And I would 100% be okay with the mixing it up and tossing in some encounters where healing is super tight to give it some diversity. I actually think that would challenge healers more - going from one encounter where they need to add 500 dps while keeping the team alive, to the next one where they can barely keep their MP up, only healing.

But what I don't like is healers saying "I am not gonna dps" because that's simply what they wanna do or how they wanna play. That's just stubborn.

[Anova]

Overall, I like the concept of stance dancing on healers and the dynamics in shifting between DPS/Healing phases in fights.

I do think SE has focused on a specific meta and gimmick for their healers and raid design (that of DPS gating) to the detriment of the gameplay.

While I see that the designs makes sense and is actually pretty fun, it's also starting to get stale and creating some unbalanced strategies. I'd just like to see SE willing to experiment a little more with basic raid and mechanic designs, possibly through new guildhests or the like.

I don't like the trend where we have healers spending all the time in DPS and other heals spending all the time in healing (Why not just make it 2 tanks, 1 healer, and 5 dps for the party?).

I have a similar distaste for those players who argue that healers should not DPS at all and should only be healbots (early MMOs actually had healing mechanics easy enough that a 13yo could program a bot for it).

[AzureFlare]

Thing is, making healing interesting isn't so much a problem with it being hard to just think up something, but it is also about healing being very GCD-based, having few instants, a very long GCD, few healing options and every healer wanting different things. We already have the basic 'main healer + hybrid healer vs double main healer' debate going on right here. Next, we'll get a 'script vs whack-a-mole health bars' debate. A 'static vs semi-"battle of wits"' debate. And so on. If we already hear DPS-scholars say 'No' the moment we try to alter things to be more pure-heal + pure-heal friendly, I can only imagine what'd happen if we changed it more.

You can't make things too sporadic since people have always been used to mechanics being very predictable and giving you a pretty hefty warning who's going to be hit. You can't make mechanics too randomly overwhelming because the base healing toolkit isn't designed to handle it, instant spells are few and far in between on top of having lag and animation locks, and the cast times are very long. And yeah, there'd be a lot less Cleric Stance usage if that was the case since the average healer would become very intimidated (even more so than they are now).

I do believe they can still change up a lot of things and are being way too lax on us thinking we'll shout like damsels in distress the moment something touches us. I'd love for them to more regularly test us on how low we'd let people go before single-healing them, eventually healing them back to full with AoE healing once gathering up again, since it is so powerful (as opposed to countering AoE damage with AoE healing). Or being forced to think about overhealing with %leech mechanics (boss does 10% of current hp as damage with x damage minimum and heals for all damage done), fixed % attacks, you name it.

I have a similar distaste for those players who argue that healers should not DPS at all and should only be healbots (early MMOs actually had healing mechanics easy enough that a 13yo could program a bot for it).

Couldn't you technically do that right now anyway? Obviously I'm not going into the details how, but most bosses are literally dances to begin with and you can bait out mechanics too, plus like I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of prep-time for mechanics. If anything, a bot would probably follow a dance/timeline better than a human would. Like a slower DDR but more possible inputs. Heck, I think I read somewhere SE themselves mentioned they used AI to test and tune the encounters.

[Immut]

Ya'll are gonna be shocked and amazed but I actually agree. However the accuracy thing they got going on is absolute bullshit. Instead of making healers too busy to dps, they've simply made them UNABLE to, which is a complete cop-out.

Another complete cop-out is the hard enrage timers. Putting the entire fight on an invisible timer and when it runs out you die inexplicably is not how you do a proper dps check. ODIN is how you do a proper dps check. Odin will eventually just get tired of your shit and actually warn you that his wipe attack is coming, at which point everyone starts pumping out their max deeps, healers and tanks included.

And even with entire fight timers, there should be phases (by which i mean just periods of time, not proper entire phases) of the fight where BOTH healers can drop to cleric for 5 seconds, lay their dots on, and go back to healing. It shouldn't be like "Ok you dps while I do both our fucking jobs for 90% of the encounter". At that point you're bringing an entire party member just to handle one thing which will eventually be bypassed with enough gear.

[Kaenbyou]

Well, obviously as a main SCH, I don't have a lot of issue with that way of playing... as long as it is made cleverly and with all the team on point (so only in static).
For example, in my static, the tank I manage is in full deliverance (except tank buster) and strenght gear, so I end up having a really low dps, but I'm not blamed for it, because it's the strat we all choosed and accepted and instead our WAR can do around 1k dps in A1S.
The main issue is that those strat are now leaking in the casual/PUG content and you see everyone wanting to do it, and unfortunately, it affects all jobs.
You end up seeing main tank in thordan EX, with around 14k-15k hp that almost get one shot by the tank buster, or dps not wanting do to mechanics that well because muh deeps (some dps don't even want to stack for dragon's rage so they can keep their number up).
And guess who ends up being blamed for wipe? The healer, because numbers are too low (yup, the only healer line on parse that people look at is the dps, not the hps).
So for me, the issue isn't the balance, or the content, it's the fact that 90% of the player population is trying to play like the top 10% without understanding anything about it.

[LegoTechnic]

And even with entire fight timers, there should be phases (by which i mean just periods of time, not proper entire phases) of the fight where BOTH healers can drop to cleric for 5 seconds, lay their dots on, and go back to healing. It shouldn't be like "Ok you dps while I do both our fucking jobs for 90% of the encounter". At that point you're bringing an entire party member just to handle one thing which will eventually be bypassed with enough gear.

I think my off-tank just sneezed. Or he would have if his WAR DPS wasn't phenomenal.

Also don't sell the SCH short. Even while DPSing the fairy is still contributing a considerable amout of heal potential, and throughout the fight you're mitigating with soil/shields and flash healing with indomitability. The class itself its built around quick, sporadic heals with beefy cooldowns, so there's no downside to playing its strength whether you're filling the down time with DPS or more shields.