Suggestion as to how to get people to become healers.

[Sebazy]

it doesn't really. a lot of times they didn't know they screwed up till after the playerbase gets a hold of it. we're talking about their original intention before launch. if their pre-launch was balanced for Coil, would WAR have been so terrible?

I don't really get your drift sorry =( The long and short of it in my eyes is that A) BCOB was effectively day 1 hardcore raid content for legacy players, B) Turn 2 ADS had a mechanic that required multiple tank switches and thus tanks required taunt to clear, keep in mind this was long before that awful enrage strat was a thing. With these two points in mind it's pretty clear that this cross class ability was 100% mandatory right from the go and SE would have known this.

*edit*

In fairness though, outside of coil I think the whole tank switch mechanic did a sterling british bus impression by coming along in a trio with the 2.1 EX primals. So I'll give you that <3

remember Virus rotation?

I remember that and iffy warriors like yesterday

[Capriana]

Guys while I take the time to read each and every comment, please note I intended this to be a discussion rather than an argument of who is right and whats the META/Best way to play healer. Since this topic has gained some interest please keep it civilized and do not resort to personal attacks.

I honestly stated my opinion as to since I enjoy being a healer but do not like stance dancing perhaps there are others out there who feel the same.
And if it were to go away and my small arsenal of DPS gained some buff as to scale of MIND I would main my SCH.

[DaikiKiyoshi]

So you are telling me jobs where intended to be left out of content? I wouldn't take someone refusing to AoE where AoE is needed, for protect you are talking about a change years old, way to suit your narrative.

Healers where intended to help DPS 2.0 +, (HELL they where basically a nuker that can heal in 1.0 lamo) they just do not know the amounts players would be able carry out. For SCH, the SCH and SMN was a 1.0 relic that did not fit in the game to begin with, so quoting what they did to SCH in any form holds no water to an argument anyway. Giving us leeches at 40 is just ****, to give you an idea how much oversight they can have in regards to balance.

Not having a cross class ability by default does not show intention. They gave lacking tools to give cross classing some purpose, again it is a 1.0 relic, it never did fit in 2.0+, why they are changing things in SB (should happened in HW)

So I felt the need to bold this part for reference and to share the following post that gives a good response to this topic with a direct quote from Yoshida as well.

"Healer DPS is not taken into account" for raids
Slycer from BG translated a Game Watch interview with Yoshi-P. His translation can be found here.

Of note, there was a discussion about WHM DPS which lead to a tangent about raid design and the DPS check, leading to this quote:

Yoshida: Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers. Then when those publish clear videos and other people see the healers DPSing, they might think that healers need to be DPSing even though its a situation that only arose because their clear would have otherwise been impossible. While we could take this into account, and assume a different item level in the next update which would then make it impossible to clear even with the healer DPS, we'd eliminate this type of play for highly skilled players who use communication, items, and a high level of understanding to come up with those last second clears. That would be a tough decision to make, so I still think it should be up to each party's own plans.

This is also one of the reasons we decided to implement both a normal and savage version of Alexander. Once again, healer DPS was not included in the development team's calculation as it was for other jobs, so you should just think of healer DPS as a last way to get your overall party's DPS up to where it needs to be.
The reason I brought this up was partially because there's been a discussion in a few thread in the past where posters indicate if the developers may or may not have accounted for healer DPS when they built their raids and/or dungeons.

(I also just want to have this quote handy in my history =D)

To quote, the DPS check is calculated by:

They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.
What this means to me:

No, as a healer you are not required to DPS to beat content.

However,

Yes, you are inefficient if you aren't DPSing when opportunities present themselves to allow for DPS because the dev team gave you the tools to increase your DPS presence.

And

Yes, you should be attempting to play your role to the best of your capabilities (whether it be Tank, DPS, Heals).

TL;DR NO healer dps was NOT taken into account in content development and scaling. As such healer dps is NOT a requirement in any way, shape, or form.

YES it's lazy to not dps as a healer in almost all content and an optimal healer most certainly will find time to dps.

NO this does not change the fact that healer dps is NOT REQUIRED NOR WAS IT INTENDED, proved by the fact that the director of the game himself said so. These are the facts. Until such time as Yoshida says otherwise they will remain the facts. Best to deal with it.

[Uhm]

The only time I don't like Clerics Stance is when it won't turn off. Otherwise i like the risk, it makes me think about what I'm doing more. If they take away Cleric Stance comletely I'd feel like I get training weels even though I already know how to ride a bicycle. It would be convenient don't get me wrong, I wouldn't even need my feet to stay upright, and for healing the challenge would be lower, I feel like things would get a lot more boring if there isn't also a change to healing gameplay in general.
Right now I have to look at the boss' cast bar or animation sometimes and have to pay attention to when I have to turn off Clerics Stance for pre casting, wouldn't be so important if I could heal at any time.
They could make Clerics Stance not have a cooldown after putting it on, so you can turn it on and off immediatly again if you need.
Or make things like tetragrammaton and Essential Dignity work while in Clerics Stance, like Benediction, that would make reaction times faster for saving people that stood in an AoE or something.
But I actually don't think there is a shortage in healers, not in dungeons and not even in 24 man, in dungeons it's tanks and in 24 man it's DPS I don't have to wait for healers often.

[Synrin]

That is especially true if it were a la WoW's Disc Priest (earlier versions), where smart healing was a thing and kept things fun due to damage done = heals automatically applied to party members. Your typical manual input was just who to put a shield on first (absorbs damage), before you end up applying it to everyone seconds later anyway.

I just have to touch upon this point as I loved discipline priest and had been playing it a lot. I was by no means a pro and knew by far better disc priests but it was so much fun and you were able to both dps and heal at the same time without crippling the other as is the case when stance dancing. That is why I heal as SCH. Cleric stance on to apply dots, cleric stance off to throw shields, cleric stance on to spam broil -> profit. *And here I will complain again how it is clunky to turn it on and off because of the cooldown and intermittent response

But well, discipline priest is a unique sort of healer, and somehow I doubt we will be seeing anything of the sort in XIV.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Frankly, I suspect this is precisely what will happen in Stormblood. Yes, yes, I know Yoshi's comments but the devs have said numerous things and abruptly changed their minds or the community misinterpreted. That being said, if they did remove Cleric and scale healer damage through mind, I hope you're ready for the ensuing results because that kills any debate on healer DPS. Groups will demand it significantly more than they already do. It essentially confirms the meta belief: healers must DPS and you will be expected to.

This is, IMHO, the biggest problem that FFXIV faces as an MMORPG. There are three roles in the trinity, not one. If what you're saying is true, then we should all re-roll DPS and forget about anything else. I know that's not what you are suggesting, but that first sentence of yours perfectly describes the biggest thing wrong in this game and community as far as I am concerned. If it's really true, it makes the game one dimensional.

Unfortunately, it's an accurate summary. Case in point, let's look at my rough opener while running A12S on Warrior.

- I pull because Warrior generators significantly higher hate with no DPS drawback
- Without a Ninja, I do an Unchained opener; with one I do Storm's Eye.
- Once I drop Defiance (between 3-6 GCDs), I'll never need tank stance again.
- I purposely blow Equilibrium because overhealing generates higher aggro and I have no use for it otherwise.
- Because I Holmgang the first tank buster, both healers have nearly a full minute of zero healing requirements.
- I can mitigate the second buster or the DRK provokes and cheeses it with Living, resulting in less healing requirements once again.

That is an entire phase of arguably the hardest fight currently in the game and I'm cheesing through it. I blow Vengeance/Raw for Fell Cleave stacks as I simply don't need them. Of course, I have near BiS, and this doesn't quite work at release but I wanted to outline why damage is such a primary motivator. There simply isn't anything else to do. Once you know the fight, you know exactly where to cheese through mechanics. And if they don't hit hard enough, you won't need mitigation/healing, thus all you do is damage. In fact, higher damage has actually become a form of mitigation itself. The second set of puddles can be a pain, but if you push out high numbers, Alexander dies before you even see it.

[Keridwyn]

I've been lurking and reading this thread for a while now and finally decided I needed to post.

As was previously said you're not going to see an increase in healers until the responsibility of it doesn't exist. People tend to play dps because it's harder to spot a bad one, especially in 8 or 24 man content. It's absolute possible but far less likely.

That said I think you would see a few more folks at least trying it out if CS was overhauled just a little bit. Speaking from personal experience if you've got potato internet like me, you tend to be extremely anxious about using it because lag will eventually nail you. I do not mind DPSing, I mind the fact that it's all or nothing. There have been good solutions posted in this thread, I'd rather see one of them go through rather than the skill just pruned.

[Sebazy]

TL;DR NO healer dps was NOT taken into account in content development and scaling. As such healer dps is NOT a requirement in any way, shape, or form.

This is going to sound incredibly elitist here so I do apologise in advance, but I can't really see a better way to put this across or sugar coat it.

I see people passionately shouting this 'content DOESNT require healers to DPS ooh my'. Pretty much every single time my curiosity gets the better of me and I go to have a look, no logs, no raid mounts on lodestone thus is fairly safe to assume no experience to back it up =/ By all means prove me wrong, I don't mean this as a personal attack, rather I just love a good debate <3

In the content you've experienced, you are absolutely correct, I'm fairly certain it's mathematically possible to beat expert roulette with auto attack damage. And yes, if you hold off hitting savage until your group has mostly tome/24 man gear then you can also easily get away without it.

However, saying that healer DPS is absolutely NOT required to clear savage is just as incorrect as saying it IS. To counter quote and bold:

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers. Then when those publish clear videos and other people see the healers DPSing, they might think that healers need to be DPSing even though its a situation that only arose because their clear would have otherwise been impossible.

Now note that SE typically work on the assumption that the 'min' ilvl is about halfway through that tier and yes, the progression FCs going for early clears will generally find themselves in a situation where they do actually require DPS optimisation from both their healers and tanks.

This disparity in opinion seems to stem between those that have experienced progression raiding in endgame content vs those that haven't. Both sides would do well to appreciate this and perhaps even accept that rather than being as cut and dry as Yoshida would like, it's actually a bit of a grey area.

[CuteWhisper]

while I do stance dance, cleric stance is clunky and I would like it to be reworked. It never goes off when I want it to and when it does, it manages to get right hack on and by the time it finally stays off, my tank is almost dead.

[Capriana]

while I do stance dance, cleric stance is clunky and I would like it to be reworked. It never goes off when I want it to and when it does, it manages to get right hack on and by the time it finally stays off, my tank is almost dead.

this. Exactly why I feel inadequate on my SCH. Because either is rush rush rush heal heal heal after a hiccup. Or I don't DPS and I feel their eyes focusing on my buff bar and wondering WTH!?