Suggestion as to how to get people to become healers.

[Reiryuu]

This really needs to stop, it is not "intended" to be done in that way:

Healers where always "intended" to help DPS, the problem is drawing a baseline. If they included healer dps in calculations, content WOULD BE TOO HARD!!!!! for most groups. Reason for this comes from how to calculate that? because if you are assuming more opportunity for healer to DPS then what most players are able to do, because of DPS getting hit by aoe, tanks not using cooldown properly, so on, then content will not be cleared if you are expecting people to be perfect.

Quoting yourself to supplement your argument. Classy. (tongue in cheek-- not dissing you, just a bit of a tease)

I would like to, however, remind you and some of the others arguing this point that this thread is a suggestion for how to get more people to become healers and how this argumentative attitude towards new healers is contributing to people avoiding the role. If you want more healers to play, you're going to have to relax your standards a bit especially for the newer players. Many players like you and Bourne_Endeavor seem to believe that healers shouldn't have a spare moment to breathe. Others think that the only duty of a healer is to heal-- there are plenty of other games out there where that's all healers are expected to do as mentioned a few pages back. There should be a middle ground of tolerance or at least more healing intensive content or more things for healers to do besides dps. That's why some of us are arguing this point of less intensive healer DPS attitude.

It'll be interesting to see what the devs are changing about cleric stance. (One of the dev blogs did mention it would be changing) I have a feeling it's going to make or break the healing role for a lot of people depending on what it is.

And this is where the issue lies: The double standard starts at the design level already.

Yep. I totally agree. This is a problem. IF the devs truly want healers to have a choice between DPSing or not in their down time, healers NEED to have something else to do instead. Short-term Buffs, playing tetris to give the whole group/raid a dps buff, twiddling their thumbs for haste, whatever. AST has the buffs in their cards which probably makes them closer to the ideal healer that can either dps or not, while WHM has squat >.<;

Edit: (I hope I don't need to mention that the tetris thing and that was not a serious suggestion)

[Tsunenori]

More than cleric stance, the biggest issue I find with random healers is when they enter what I call the "healer panic" and totally freeze up when there's a lot of damaged party members. Which leads to deaths, because inaction is the worst action to take when people are dying. The majority of content in the game doesn't put you into these kinds of situations often, so people trying out healers become accustomed to Cure spamming the tank lazily for long periods of time. When these moments DO happen, infrequently though they do, a lot of leveling healers I feel like react poorly not just mechanically but emotionally to them and become discouraged or think they've failed, and then end up doubling down on bad habits or outright quitting the role.

I think this is honestly a bigger issue than the healer DPS / Cleric Stance debate. Removing Cleric Stance isn't a bad idea for lowering the bar to healer DPS and making people feel more comfortable, but more than that I think the game needs to do a better job building up the difficulty on healers from a lower level, and do it more consistently, so that when new healers do run into their Chimeras and Isgebinds and Ozmas and Scathatchs they hopefully wouldn't have as much trouble with them.

Not really getting deep into the whole Healer DPS in raid content debate. It's the minority of content to begin with, and a genuine non-issue for actual statics who can discuss tactics that fit their party and players. Although if I'm honest, despite how much I love it, Healer DPS should probably be toned back. We're far too powerful, and a good healer can drag just about any group kicking and screaming to the exit while doing more damage than the DPS. It's probably not healthy long-term. I'd rather, as some others are mentioning, see healers become less about being in a binary state (heal mode, dps mode) and instead gain some more variety to the gameplay.

[Sebazy]

Yep, the key here is finding a compromise between all the camps whilst also working towards narrowing the skill gap between the raiding and casual communities.

There are many ways in which they could achieve this and several good examples have been bought up over the course of this thread.

I do think that dialling up the healing and mechanics requirements in dungeons to be a bit more akin to early AK/Vault difficulty rather than the mindless face rolls we have now would be a good thing overall, but taking everything up to 11 is just going to be off putting. A better approach would be to diversify the healers more. The current systems in place with gear encourage players to be able to play multiple healer and tank roles rather than just sticking with a single specific job. Expanding on that and for example, coming down hard on AST's personal DPS whilst also increasing their ability to buff either themselves or their party to end up with similar overall numbers would give people a proper choice in play style rather than the 'do you like your whm with or without cards' deal that we have right now.

[Reiryuu]

Snip

I agree with just about everything you said lol. I mean, why can't WHM, for example, get some channeled ability that channels onto a mob and when the DPS kill it, it bursts into an Assize like spell which damages nearby mobs and heals the players for a little bit. Maybe during the channel the mob get slowed or has a DMG down effect or something.

Why can't we have abilities like Dia from FFXI? A light elemental debuff that was a DoT + Armor down debuff on a mob? I mean, there you have both a DoT and a utility spell in one.

[Tsunenori]

Why can't we have abilities like Dia from FFXI? A light elemental debuff that was a DoT + Armor down debuff on a mob? I mean, there you have both a DoT and a utility spell in one.

There's definitely room to expand there, and debilitating is a design space that has been almost completely untouched in XIV so far. Rain of Death used to reduce all affected targets' damage dealt by 10%, but that was removed because groups would just keep 100% uptime on it. I assume situations like that are their biggest concern, but I'm sure they can find a way to work those kinds of effects in more. I'm trying to finish this WHM relic I locked myself into before the expansion ends, but I love playing AST for that reason. Having things to do other than just DPS or Heal is a lot more engaging to me.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

Please don't presume my stance. I never once said healers shouldn't have a moment to breathe. They did, in both Gordias and Midas. Only having to heal 20% of the time in dungeons isn't "breathing," it's "do more than the barest of minimums." I also specifically said don't join groups where they expect healer DPS. You generally don't see people care as much in DF, but endgame raiding is a different beast. Premade groups can have whatever standards they want. And many want to skip mechanics, which is a form of mitigation. I'd prefer more healer intensive content, but until they actually release that, the current philosophy will not change. As for other games, it's irrelevant. They keep their healers busy whereas XIV doesn't.

[ZeratoTyrael]

Yep, the key here is finding a compromise between all the camps whilst also working towards narrowing the skill gap between the raiding and casual communities.

There are many ways in which they could achieve this and several good examples have been bought up over the course of this thread.

I do think that dialling up the healing and mechanics requirements in dungeons to be a bit more akin to early AK/Vault difficulty rather than the mindless face rolls we have now would be a good thing overall, but taking everything up to 11 is just going to be off putting. A better approach would be to diversify the healers more. The current systems in place with gear encourage players to be able to play multiple healer and tank roles rather than just sticking with a single specific job. Expanding on that and for example, coming down hard on AST's personal DPS whilst also increasing their ability to buff either themselves or their party to end up with similar overall numbers would give people a proper choice in play style rather than the 'do you like your whm with or without cards' deal that we have right now.

Not too sure I like that idea, but I do agree with the first two points. While jobs do need to be a tad more diversified, something like that is a bit too far off. A big issue is that content and the game itself is built around 2 healers max. Even in 24man content, it's logistically 3-8man groups. While you can heal other groups, the ability to do so is sub-par at best because of how the UI is setup (I've regularly used controller and/or kb/m in the past so I know both sides of the UI struggle). You can only get so much of a healer variety when they all need to be able to approximately do the same as any other combination of 2 healers as far as output.

It's the same dilemma WoW faced when 10man Heroic (what would now be 10man version of mythic, or in ff14 terms, savage)content was the meta. There was so much healer homogenization because you only needed 2 healers in a vast majority of cases. It was even worse in their case because at the time there were Disc priests, holy priests, holy paladins, resto shaman, and resto druids, with mistweaver monks coming in MoP. Tanks also suffered a very similar overlap, something that is also here but at least as far as tanks here it's not as apparent.

[Vexander]

What if... MND was adapted to increase Healer DPS, and Cleric Stance were instead altered to affect each healer uniquely via Talents?

So for a SCH, perhaps the newly designed Cleric Stance would transform Eos/Selene into Helios/Oberon, essentially, DPS Fairies? The fairy plays a big role in the SCH playstyle, and I think if SCHs had the opportunity to alternate between them Healing or DPS'ing, and their fairies healing or DPS'ing, it'd open up a new route for SCH players to focus on one aspect or the other while their Fairy can do the opposite, or supplement the pure DPS style during solo play, or Pure Heal style during progression raiding? My guess is we'd still end up seeing pure DPS SCHs in groups though, and any SCH who doesn't DPS while their Fairy is DPS would be considered low skill...

For WHM we'd see what we saw in Amdapor Hard Mode with Kiribu. Their Healing Spells would become DPS spells, but also make their DPS spells into buffing spells for their party.

I'm not really sure how this could play out for AST in a way that would make it unique other than perhaps making the cards slap debuffs onto enemies instead of buffs onto allies...

[Ama_Hamada]

Many players like you and Bourne_Endeavor seem to believe that healers shouldn't have a spare moment to breathe.

Nope, that is not what I believe, nor what I am auguring.
Here is what I am auguring:
1. tanking away cleric stance will not magically make more people play healer
2. Putting more healing intense content will not make people play healer
2b. Putting more intense content is very dangerous and will most likely lead to more players quitting.
3. DPS checks do not include healer DPS because it would make the game too hard, due to unable to perdict what the player base can handle. If tanks are not using CDS, healers don't get as much time to DPS. IF DPS/ tank/healer is eating too much avoidable damage, they now get little time to DPS, factor in people do not play perfectly, suddenly factoring healer DPS makes things unplayable for most.
4. The dev team always intended healers to DPS and people here are taking the quote out of context to prove a non-existent point.
5. Taking away the ability for healers to DPS, like costing more MP is very detrimental to the health of the game perceptually with WHM. (laughable someone not even 60 WHM trying to suggest this, along with stalking me in different threads because he did not like I called him a troll because he was contradicting his own point.)

I know what this thread is for, and so far the suggestions do more harm then good. As for my view on the "cleric stance" change, is the same thing as provoke, and that will be making it baseline for all healers same for early level esuna.

What if... MND was adapted to increase Healer DPS, and Cleric Stance were instead altered to affect each healer uniquely via Talents?

So for a SCH, perhaps the newly designed Cleric Stance would transform Eos/Selene into Helios/Oberon, essentially, DPS Fairies? The fairy plays a big role in the SCH playstyle, and I think if SCHs had the opportunity to alternate between them Healing or DPS'ing, and their fairies healing or DPS'ing, it'd open up a new route for SCH players to focus on one aspect or the other while their Fairy can do the opposite, or supplement the pure DPS style during solo play, or Pure Heal style during progression raiding? My guess is we'd still end up seeing pure DPS SCHs in groups though, and any SCH who doesn't DPS while their Fairy is DPS would be considered low skill...

For WHM we'd see what we saw in Amdapor Hard Mode with Kiribu. Their Healing Spells would become DPS spells, but also make their DPS spells into buffing spells for their party.

I'm not really sure how this could play out for AST in a way that would make it unique other than perhaps making the cards slap debuffs onto enemies instead of buffs onto allies...

I think you are on to something tbh, good ideas to start from, now to refine it....

Yep, the key here is finding a compromise between all the camps whilst also working towards narrowing the skill gap between the raiding and casual communities.

There are many ways in which they could achieve this and several good examples have been bought up over the course of this thread.

I do think that dialling up the healing and mechanics requirements in dungeons to be a bit more akin to early AK/Vault difficulty rather than the mindless face rolls we have now would be a good thing overall, but taking everything up to 11 is just going to be off putting. A better approach would be to diversify the healers more. The current systems in place with gear encourage players to be able to play multiple healer and tank roles rather than just sticking with a single specific job. Expanding on that and for example, coming down hard on AST's personal DPS whilst also increasing their ability to buff either themselves or their party to end up with similar overall numbers would give people a proper choice in play style rather than the 'do you like your whm with or without cards' deal that we have right now.

Oh that kind of difficultly, sure. Hard to know what people are referring when a quote is used that was in reference for salvage like raids.

[Reiryuu]

Nope, that is not what I believe, nor what I am auguring.
Snip

1) Nothing is magical, but it may or may not help. Personally, I don't care one way or another, but I think the removal will do more harm than good.
2) It would appease people who play healers to heal. Not talking a major change, but more than it is now.
3-4) And you have a dev quote supporting your statement? The devs seem to be very keen on not forcing people to do things they don't want to do. Don't want to DPS, well you have 2 other roles to play. Don't want to heal? Well, you have 2 other roles to play. I would argue that healer dps isn't considered because of this very reason-- the devs do not want to force healers to dps. Removing accuracy from healing gear gives more support for this idea- the materia slots were added for those healers that do raid and want to help out with DPS can put accuracy in those slots. The devs want to give healers an option, but unfortunately there's no real option because there's literally nothing else for a healer to do other than heal or dps. This is a problem. If there was something else healers could do to contribute to a raid or party when they aren't healing, I feel we could both agree on this point, but unfortunately there isn't at this time and there may never be.
5) 100% agree with you there.

As for cleric stance, it's already available to all the healing classes so I don't think that putting it in the role skill set will be the change. It may be something like Enochain (however you spell that) where it's something you don't have to toggle anymore or it could be a fundamental change. It's anyone's guess at this point, but I bet if YoshiP could go back in time, I doubt Cleric Stance would be a thing (because of all the arguing it's caused).