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

[Sebazy]

They could possibly slightly lower the burst damage and increase attrition damage but that's probably the most they could do.

I think there's actually a lot of room for more tank damage, SE just need to rethink how they go about it really. A great example would be something like Turn 4 in ilvl 70-90 gear, the final phases including the fed dreadnaught put out massive quantities of tank damage with nary a tank buster in sight, it was just relentless massive and frequent auto attack damage with various similarly sized ability hits woven in to make the damage spikier and harder to predict. Needless to say, until people were overgearing the encounter, it was firmly a 2 healer workload despite the fact there wasn't a death sentence style hit in sight. By comparison, A9S-A12S's bosses hit for very little, it's not until they are throwing out tank busters or aoes that the numbers start coming at you. You could also take this further with something like the rampage mechanic from Everquest or even just cleave style attacks that need to be shared aka T11. Having a huge swathes of damage across both tanks is also a great recipe for a busy pair of healers.

gear progression means the incoming damage decreases over time, making any gear progression for healers fairly meaningless.

Couldn't agree more, I've gotten less and less enthused about gear upgrades as each raid tier as gone by, you eventually realise that as long as you've got the HP to survive the big hits and the mp to go the distance with a little breathing room for safety, anything else is better given to the DPS/Tanks. IMHO a big part of the problem is the huge gains in VIT we see between tiers. Our best in slot HP has more than doubled through the course of this expansion. Smaller HP gains during progression would help reduce the syndrome of healer#2 feeling more like a third wheel.

One option would be to offer other options in group play that outshine personal damage that people use in solo play, creating a new supportive gameplay style.

Taking this point and running with it somewhat, SE have kind of backed themselves into a corner with healer DPS in that it is all terribly one dimensional, at it's most basic level, you simply apply your dots and then blast away with your biggest single target nuke. When you note that this game is incredibly vague in how it presents dot damage coupled with healer single target nukes being a bit limp across the board (I can't be the only one who misses 3.0's broil noise!) then it's little wonder that such a large proportion of the healer player base feels little inclination to use these abilities. It's not until you get to the progression raiders looking at logs and encounter data where they realise the potential since SE themselves do such a poor job of putting that across.

Personally, I think the best way forward without being too radical is to consider adding small side effects to healer DD. It doesn't have to be massive or game changing, it just has to be rewarding and have a tangible positive effect for the group beyond some weedy number flashing by on your screen for a split second. There's a wealth of options out there, small splash healing around the target you're nuking, specific vulnerability debuffs for a few seconds etc. SCH/SMN's energy drain has the right idea, SE just need to take that ball and run with it.

FFXIV actually has easy modes of Alexander (normal version) and primals (story versions).

It's also worth refreshing the point that savage/extreme content gradually gets toned down over time via item level upgrades and the echo buff. This game most definitely caters for the more casual raider, the only real issue is that the smaller 8 man raid size means that one weak link can be a much bigger detriment to the overall raid than in a significantly larger group as seen elsewhere.

maybe non dpsing healers may get a break too.

Zero DPS healers will likely always get frowned upon in the progression raiding scene as things stand because frankly, that's currently either a poor standard of play, sheer laziness or just plain not caring. However, I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that if you combine rock solid consistency, good communication, the ability to listen and learn from mistakes, the capacity to adjust and react to situations without getting flustered, a willingness to never stop trying to improve and a strong drive to solo heal as much of an encounter as is possible as early as you can reliably do so along with a DPS heavy healing partner who you can coordinate well with then you will go far.

TLDR: Being dependable, consistent and low maintenance counts for just as much as your raw healer DPS. Any group leader that stubbornly claims otherwise isn't one I'd particularly relish raiding for.

[Feyona]

You're getting the entire wrong idea from it, though.


I'm talking that sort of MP management. By making frequent, smart healing decisions and having skill interactions and complexity, you would save a lot of mana, which then could be funneled into buffs or simply going longer. It's a far cry from asking players to stand around idly IMO.

Im actually not a fan of micro management and that idea failed in wow, which is a very similar game. The idea was to be smart about your heals. It failed because of the ramdomness of human error. And of course the factors of gear level differences and skill levels. In wow though you do have to heal alot more, no one needs you to dps , Ive no idea what its like now.

[Kitfox]

You're getting the entire wrong idea from it, though.

The point is explicitly to NOT make you idle, but rather use a lot of weak heals that interact with each other or require smart usage to either retain or regain mana. A very crude and basic way is the freecure proc. As proc, it is unreliable, but imagine casting cure while regen is on the target would make the next cure II have half the mana cost. Or imagine a HoT that replenishes half its cost if it's not refreshed but rather runs out naturally. Or weaker cure that reduces the CD of (free) Tetra by Y seconds or another that gives access to a free OGCD. Or a spell that refreshes the duration of Regen and costs less than Regen itself. Or a cheap spell that heals a good amount after X seconds, where you have to gauge whether it'll be a good investment or not. Or another spell that increases the potency of an otherwise weak spell with every cast, increasing its value. Or a ground healing spell that replenishes MP for every person that stands in it every tick. A heal that plants a buff in the target that flourishes into a free HoT if targeted with a different heal.

I'm talking that sort of MP management. By making frequent, smart healing decisions and having skill interactions and complexity, you would save a lot of mana, which then could be funneled into buffs or simply going longer. It's a far cry from asking players to stand around idly IMO.

I think I understood what you were after but was too pessimistic about the idea. That is indeed the interesting kind of resource management, I'd be totally up for that. Those are some good ability ideas!

[Sebazy]

I'm talking that sort of MP management. By making frequent, smart healing decisions and having skill interactions and complexity, you would save a lot of mana, which then could be funneled into buffs or simply going longer. It's a far cry from asking players to stand around idly IMO.

Again, agreed totally, DPS players have some very complex rotations and combinations to concern themselves with, healers have nothing of the sort. SE could kind of achieve this at a very basic level by simply doing away with cleric stance (and having DPS abilities scale of MND in the first place) and making certain DPS abilities act as a form of MP regeneration akin to energy drain.

Warhammer Online was a fantastic example of how you could make healers depend on more than just an MP bar and I strongly recommend any developer that might just see this to have a look at some of the systems that MMO used for it's healers. Even as a non DPSy sort, I still stand by my opinion that it's Warrior Priest class was one of the most unique and best thought out alternative healing concepts ever seen in an MMO and it pains me that SE didn't have the sense to straight up plagiarise it for the Red Mage job.

[Feyona]

I think there's actually a lot of room for more tank damage, SE just need to rethink how they go about it really.

I agree there could possibly be more of an enjoyment factor to encourage healers to dps more if there really is no other choices on game than to dps (yawn). I keep suggesting getting rid of cleric and makie dps more of a dynamic part of healing. keep thinking of how much fun dsc priest was to play in wow. It wasnt an 'idle' class to play it was a class that you had to 'think' about how to play though. Because its heals were low its dps was quite high and was a shield healer. I play here cos I prefer the game. Classes were fun, wow wasnt an easy to heal game and healers and healing had much more respect

[RopeDrink]

It's starting to sound like I'm the only one who's actually quite happy with Cleric Stance the way it is. I like walking that tight rope, punching above my weight in content, not having to worry if I'll be able to handle basic trash or level up comfortably, while also not having to worry about whether I can DPS just as good as non-independant alternatives - and all it takes is worry over one global cooldown. In WoW, if you want to level up as, say, a Healer Priest in decent time - yes, even the now DPS-Centric Disc Priest - your best bet is still to dual-spec into Shadow Priest for ease & efficiency. If you applied Cleric Stance mentality to a WoW healer, 9/10 chance is you're not going to provide anything meaningful due to them typically hitting like soggy noodles, thus it's mostly down to utility - which is fine, just not very exciting.

Disc is currently one of (if not the) least desirable healers in the game for content, or at least they were up to and including the Guldan patch - not because they are more DPS centric now than ever before, but because applying DPS requirements in their entirety (rotations et al) while having Healing stem from it presents problems that direct healers simply don't have (ie. easy/noticable/direct/impactful heals right now vs moderate healing and lesser emergency CD's for the sake of being able to heal through damage instead), and such a system will also always come with the dev-fear of it getting its cake and eating it if unbalanced, and community hate if balanced. The same will apply to some of above mentioned suggestions, meaning it's less desirable than just slightly tweaking numbers surrounding how it exists now.

Healer with high damage AND healing at the same time with no consequence? Problems. Healer lacking in one but super strong in the other (epic raid healing but can't even kill basic trash /vs/ respectable DPS but can't heal if their own lives depended on it [which is ironic as a healer]) Problems. Split down the middle? Community begin playing tug'o'war to influence a change in a given direction, encouraging more 'tweaking' that never reaches a happy consensus (not that any class/spec ever truly does). Meanwhile over in FFXIV land, we have a 36 page long debate squarely aimed at the MENTALITY surrounding one ability, not any/all of the above mentioned details outside of possible meta-discussions. Some may be more desirable than others, but you can't say any of them are incapable, and said desire doesn't stretch to how it used to be in old WoW where you needed X number of specific healers (sometimes preferably 0 of others) if you wanted comfort and/or success in X content.

As a more recent example regarding Priest, I levelled Disco from scratch in Legion after the streamlining (after I finished with my main and off-main characters - had already played all past iterations of it since TBC, as well as Shadow), and it was a slog to get through with the sole reward being the understanding that I would not be accepted into high M+ due to being that spec. Half of that is aimed at the design/meta, the other half (which is 99% of this discussion) is people's attitude towards it. I've seen videos of people who took it the extra mile and are enjoying some form of success, though it doesn't change the paintbrush mentality or the meta.

its heals were low its dps was quite high and was a shield healer

TLDR: This will appeal to certain players, but not raid leaders who want consistancy. You can make it work (and many have, kudos to them - they're essentially raid wide-healers now with mana-management worries) but at the cost of far more effort compared to a barebones direct-healer of any kind who produces equal (usually better) results with less work/resources.

[Kitfox]

It's starting to sound like I'm the only one who's actually quite happy with Cleric Stance the way it is.

There's nothing wrong with Cleric Stance per se, I quite like it as well, but there's no denying the offensive spectrum of healers could be more interesting. The fact that each healer got a stronger basic nuke that replaced their old one (Ruin→Broil, Stone II→Stone III, Malefic→Malefic II) on HW release kind of goes on to prove how unimaginative it is. There's a lot options they could use with different kinds of buffs/debuffs to spice up the offensive side of healers on top of the very basic dots + nuke structure.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

perhaps your right but in that game dont you think the designers will listen to their customers and give them an easy mode? You would think game designers would like to make people enjoy their games That would make more sense than wanting round people fit into a square hole. Thats why I guess on this game some find it easy and some find it hard. In order to acheive balance both types have to 'put up ' with something, thats not ideal for them. Yes but I dont think designers want to alienate some off the game. Undue stress put on others by the community is something that can be changed without effecting peoples ability. No one can have it all their way though and not so good players will still struggle but you experts will have your own instancd soon, maybe non dpsing healers may get a break too.

They did listen. Creator is significantly easier than Midas or Gordias. If either of those raid difficulties were applicable to this discussion, healer DPS wouldn't be debated it would be downright required by everyone. With Gordias, if you spotted than 400-500 DPS on Scholar, you were kicked. Likewise, Paladin wasn't a fringe job but near universally regretted. And it wasn't entirely for meta reason but sheer necessity. The DPS checks were quite literally impossible to reach without healers adding to the mix. Compare this to Creator where you theoretically could go the whole fight without ever turning on Cleric once and it's an enormous difference. Were it made any easier, endgame raiding would be fundamentally pointless. The issue is how healing works in FFXIV. Until content requires more direct healing, people will adapt around DPS, especially at the Savage level. No amount of complaining will ever change that. Your options are to find a group willing to accommodate your preference to primarily heal (but not solo heal) or accept Savage simply isn't for you.

Like how we cannot force you to DPS, you cannot force the community to radically change based around your preferences.

[Sebazy]

It's starting to sound like I'm the only one who's actually quite happy with Cleric Stance the way it is.

Oh you're certainly not, it's arguably the main difficulty factor that separates healers now given the comparative ease of this tier. The problem is as things currently stand, it puts off more casual players from using healer DPS abilities in group content and there's no system in place to actively reward or teach them otherwise outside of very basic dps dummies/SSS. Removing the need for it at the same time as adding utility and value to the healer DPS abilities would be in line with removing the DPS reduction on foes for bards. It won't please everyone (And I STILL see bards that refuse to sing it) but it would help move things forward for sure.

Making DPSing more rewarding without also making it more accessible to the masses won't achieve much unless they blow the rewards out of proportion imo.

[MiniOmegaDragon]

i will dps only if the dam player dose not demand that i have to dps my job is <healer>