As a healer, is it my job to DPS? A new perspective.

[Lambdafish]

I enjoy the supportive aspect of healing; I'd just like to see more to it than the damage and healing dealt by itself. That said, I don't want to be cycling through buff maintenance either, as I've seen suggested as an alternative for filler time. Any ideas?

I wish this were the case too, what the game needs is more relevant utility that can be used by healers, and doing this without resorting to DPS is difficult. As a PLD I love the support side of it, and wish it were possible to create skills that were equally as good as the DPS output of WAR without being anything to do with DPS, but for now, just like healers, deal with the DPS is best meta and make the best of it.

The current utility that healers could have:
- Heal (has a cap)
- Restore TP of party(has a cap, and would be OP if able to be executed plentifully)
- Restore MP of party (has a cap, and would be OP if able to be executed plentifully)
- Mitigate (has a cap)
- Magic/physical damage down

All other forms of utility involve increasing damage, in the form of:
- Increase direct damage
- Increase skill/spell speed
- Increase crit
- slashing/piercing/blunt resist down
- magic/physical damage up

This isn't take into account that most of these don't even fit healer.

All other ways involve making healing much harder to play as well (I want healing mudras for CHM, but that wouldn't go over well I don't think)

[Shurrikhan]

I wish this were the case too, what the game needs is more relevant utility that can be used by healers, and doing this without resorting to DPS is difficult. As a PLD I love the support side of it, and wish it were possible to create skills that were equally as good as the DPS output of WAR without being anything to do with DPS, but for now, just like healers, deal with the DPS is best meta and make the best of it.

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All other ways involve making healing much harder to play as well (I want healing mudras for CHM, but that wouldn't go over well I don't think).

I'd be fine with making healers harder to play, tbh. I'd love to see more use of game knowledge, for instance; think Mercy in Overwatch—one simple utility skill, but the tactical understanding for its optimization is rather hefty. Being able to build and release element for oGCD casts with variable usage (e.g. an Aero briefly accelerating allied movement, adding jump height, or pushing back an enemy) would add so much depth to the healer role and its sense of being well-integrated into the party. Those things don't need to be unique to healers, or even any trans-role "support", but having a toolkit that benefits enough from being aware of the party and providing the impetus and safety for its various tactics as to make that its predominant mindset would make that role for me.

Honestly, I feel like one of the main reasons the DPS meta has become as rutted as it has is because the game itself is too easy, in the sense of having too few player-side or battlefield mechanics to really play around with. There's little to set up, especially as a team. And while even those added functions would return to an aim of maximizing damage amid meeting more numerous and more creative shorter-term steps to reach a faster clear in the long term, it would at least give versatility a leg to stand on, rather than class's being gauged by their absolute DPS outputs and how few dependencies they have (e.g. WAR not needing to MT for any of its added damage). If there was more to interact with and bring out versatility in the first place, I doubt gameplay would be so quick to boil down to raw damage, provided there's sufficient variety between and within each content encounter.

[Lambdafish]

Honestly, I feel like one of the main reasons the DPS meta has become as rutted as it has is because the game itself is too easy

And this is why it will never happen, because the dev team and half the community still think the game is too hard for some reason. I think the dev team actually thinks that the presentation of stats that we have now is too complicated, and too in depth...

[Bourne_Endeavor]

And this is why it will never happen, because the dev team and half the community still think the game is too hard for some reason. I think the dev team actually thinks that the presentation of stats that we have now is too complicated, and too in depth...

The fact Yoshi outright said he wants to simplify stats going into Stormblood only drives home that very assumption. Unfortunately, they seem to believe making the game easier will abruptly fix comp meta when it's far more likely to have groups dig in their heels. White Mage suffers right now because it's entirely too basic and one dimensional. Why bring a dedicated healing job when the other two can heal just as efficiency relative to the outgoing damage and provide vastly superior utility? Funny enough, PvP is almost like night and day. I love healing in PvP because it demands I play my role not a hybrid DPS. I primarily heal and provide crowd control support whenever possible. And that healing is incredibly frequent more often than not. That said, I don't dislike Cleric Stance; quite the opposite. I simply don't love how we spend so much time in it.

[Lambdafish]

I love healing in PvP because it demands I play my role not a hybrid DPS. I primarily heal and provide crowd control support whenever possible. And that healing is incredibly frequent more often than not. That said, I don't dislike Cleric Stance; quite the opposite. I simply don't love how we spend so much time in it.

I can agree with this, though PVP and PVE are essentially apples and oranges when it comes to design, I do think more can be done in terms of intances to make healers feel more valuable.

[CuteWhisper]

I don't dislike Cleric Stance; quite the opposite. I simply don't love how we spend so much time in it.

This is my dilemma with Cleric Stance as well. I want to heal more not DPS more as an healer main. While I do like DPSing on my healer, I feel like I am more in Cleric Stance than not and it just brings me down. I actually decided to changed mains because of that as well. I hope they somehow fix that.

[Shurrikhan]

And this is why it will never happen, because the dev team and half the community still think the game is too hard for some reason. I think the dev team actually thinks that the presentation of stats that we have now is too complicated, and too in depth...

To be clear, I don't mean "too easy" in the sense that its always forgiving; it's often quite the opposite of that, hence it feeling so mechanical (sometimes even borderline tedious) in what fights do present challenge. I just mean there's not enough... there. There's little to interact with. We just have varying number value inputs towards the same, single-layered metric. Our only tactical concern is generally desync, which tends to boil down to an opener and then letting the pieces fall where they will and thereafter hitting most CDs as soon they come up (apart from certain exceptions like SMN and MCH). Burst requirements are minimal because there's no advantage given for dealing damage, so long as any given add or phase completes in time not to wipe the group or drain all healer/tank reserves (CDs and/or mana). Were there just some mechanics working beneath it all, such as the ability to suppress, interrupt, knock back, or "stagger" enemies through damage (or some weapon- and/or skill-based multiplier thereof), or some actual differences between each element, there'd be so much more we could contribute to when filling long-term goals, allowing for far more windows and points of interaction.