Quote Originally Posted by Naunet View Post
No, SE is supposed to make sure their classes are balanced in such a way that weird metas that sideline certain classes don't become the norm.

Honestly, I don't really understand what is so different about this game that somehow players became obsessed with every single class dpsing as much as possible. I pop over to WildStar and play my healing esper - no one's going to expect me to dps, though I right click on things for the lols at times. Sure I bring my t4 pyrokinetic flame buff, but no one ever thinks that healers should be doing more dps in that game. Same for other MMOs I've played in the past. Why did this become such a huge thing in FFXIV? It's not like FFXIV has particularly innovative boss encounters that somehow require everyone to dps...
Because healing requirements are so effing LIGHT in this game that there's not anything else to do otherwise. Tank about to take a big hit? NP, just pre-cast a Cure II so it lands the split second after he takes the damage, then use Tetragrammaton during the off-global and he's g2g, put a Regen on him and back to DPSing. It's not really that people feel like healer DPS is "needed", exactly, it's just that if you don't do it you have something like 50% activity even at the Savage raid level, because SE decided to design their healer jobs around people new to healing, new to MMOs, playing on controllers, letting their five-year-olds play, cat is on fire, etc.

In every other game I've played healer DPS is not expected of healers outside of ones that apply auxiliary effects like debuffs or whatever, and I largely suspect it's because the actual job of healing is plenty engaging and challenging on its own. Nobody accuses me in my World of Warcraft raids of afking if I just heal. As long as I keep Triple Nemesis and Energy Stars up in TERA nobody GAFs if I use Shocking Implosion or Final Reprisal. I might still DO those things if I'm doing easier content or vastly overgear the content I'm doing, but nobody looks for an orange icon above my head at all times or pesters me in party chat about my offensive contributions so long as I don't fudge up the healing part. But here, it's so APPARENT when someone is taking an approach of "just heal" to content because their character stands in the idle animation for like 15 whole seconds before having to cast anything again. I don't know how anyone can look at that and think that's awesome healing design.