Why healing is broken and terrible, and how to fix it...

[RichardButte]

The way you're describing healer play in raiding doesn't seem any familiar to me as a person who's actually raided in this game as a healer.

I'm not just talking about raiding: I want healer play to be engaging across the board, not only when doing the most challenging content in the game (like I said in the OP).

Doing omega has been more fun for healing than any content prior, true, but there's still an awful lot of standing around.

Never been the case in all the time I have been playing this game.

Good for you.

In other news, I'm cold, so global warming is clearly a hoax. :P

[Snow_Princess]

But yes, you CAN blame them. They craft the game in a certain way and the entire reason I've posted this is because they've designed encounters and abilities in such a way that healers spend most of their time standing there having to decide whether to DPS or conserve mana instead of healing because there's no healing to do.



Yes, but it would also be more fun and engaging if part of being a healer wasn't just standing around, allowing mana to regen.

Hell, DRKs have abilities to restore their mana through dealing damage. I'd LOVE to have something like that as a healer...



I'm not trivializing them: I'm ENVYING them. I've leveled a tank to cap in HW and I would've preferred to tank but my static didn't need one.

I usually heal in MMOs, but I prefer tanking/DPSing because it's dramatically more engaging than healing is.



You can memorize when DPS are going to screw up and stand in an AoE? Lucky you! :P



I C wut U did thar.



There are literally, right now, two threads in the healer forum front page: one complaining that healers don't DPS, and the other complaining that healers DPS too much.

Did you read my post at all? you don't have to "conserve mana", unless again, people are dying left and right from always standing in bad, with an undergeared tank that don't know how to use defense CDs while overpulling. Even then the healer that has MP issues first is WHM (4.0 it did shift to SCH for a bit) and thin air helps with holy spam/raises. AST should not be having MP issues, there is no "thinking" you simply learn the fight and learn what to do, so people are correct in saying it is a git gud issue, along with being aware of your other party memebers. A lot of times in leveling dungeons, healing issues is due to the tank overpulling with weak DPS where the tank does not use CDs or even attempts to DPS stance mid-size pulls (war is the most common to do this with) and that is the reason I hate most war tanks. Also learn abilities of other classes, ask for refresh/manashift when you need it, sometimes I ask for it during my low moments just so I can dps more till Lucid Dreaming is ready again.

I was (sort of) yelled at for DPSing as a WHM. Was spamming Holy on a the second pull(the 6-7 enemies before that path opens) of Keeper a while back, and the tank(who wasn't anywhere NEAR close to death) said "rly?". Decided not to DPS for a while...they didn't like that and got frustrated until I started DPSing again.

Yeah it does happen, rare but it does. It could be simply trolling though. I have AST to 70, whm to 70, SCH to 60, and all the times I got complaining for DPS had to do with WHM with holy. I mean.. I just do not get it.. do people have holyphobia? It was that and early 2.0 (not a complaint more like a concern) saying I had cleric stance on. I simply said I know and I take it off when I need to heal.

[Nhisso]

So youre either a bad tank or a DPS that is upset you dont get praise, because no one can be serious with a post like this. And ive literally never once seen a healer scolded for NOT DPS'ing.
Please.

[ArcanoJones]

As long as a healer is doing their job and nobody is dying ..especially the Tank and the group is beating all the content. Then anybody who actually gives the healer a hard time is completelly wrong. Healers do not need to DPS. If they get time to it is at their option. IN fact Healers trying to do damage is why groups will wipe and problems will arise sometimes because they either run out of Mana or they are not paying attention to their healing duties.

[Taika]

As long as a healer is doing their job and nobody is dying ..especially the Tank and the group is beating all the content. Then anybody who actually gives the healer a hard time is completelly wrong. Healers do not need to DPS. If they get time to it is at their option. IN fact Healers trying to do damage is why groups will wipe and problems will arise sometimes because they either run out of Mana or they are not paying attention to their healing duties.

I think you're a new player in this game? There is in fact content where healers do need to DPS so that the party would be able to beat it (I think both OS3 and OS4 fall in this category right now: see this post about OS4 DPS calculations as a reference), and in the content where healing isn't strictly required, the healing requirements are so low that if the healer would be only healing, they would be completely inactive most of the time. So it's highly encouraged most of the time, and in some cases even demanded in this game.

And which instances would those be..The only time I can think of where extra DPS would be required is if you need to kill something very quickly and those instances would be very short.

I listed them right there: OS3 and OS4 at least, OS2 for the majority of the players too (Omega Savage instances). Additionally, in a level 60 dungeon there's a mechanic where both DD players are unable to do anything until tank and healer free them with DPS, and there are also certain time frames in dungeons and raids when there's no incoming damage at all but party DPS is required (so healers are obviously meant to DPS and not just stand there and watch while their party is doing stuff).

[ArcanoJones]

And which instances would those be..The only time I can think of where extra DPS would be required is if you need to kill something very quickly and those instances would be very short.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

And which instances would those be..The only time I can think of where extra DPS would be required is if you need to kill something very quickly and those instances would be very short.

Undergeared Savage Raiding, basically.

[Cenerae]

And which instances would those be..The only time I can think of where extra DPS would be required is if you need to kill something very quickly and those instances would be very short.

It's not even necessarily about whether a healer is *required* to do damage to beat the content, it's about whether you *should* or even can.

Healer damage is no joke, and can greatly speed up runs, from dungeons all the way up to raids. Yes, it takes a degree of comfort and experience with the class and the dungeon/boss in question, but nobody's going to expect perfection from you outside of the hardest content. The more comfortable and experienced you get, the more damage you'll be able to contribute without letting people die.

Deciding straight up that since it's only your job to heal that you're only going to heal is lazy. It would be the same as a tank walking into a pack of mobs, establishing emnity, and then pressing no buttons until the pack is dead. It's only their job to hold aggro, nobody said they had to deal damage, right? Or what about a DPS deciding they're only doing one combo and not making use of self buffs or cooldowns either? They're doing damage, nobody said they had to do good damage.

You wouldn't let either of those other situations fly, so healers shouldn't really be getting a free pass either. You'll often get that free pass in easier content because most people just don't care enough or don't want to waste time with potential tantrums (since trying to help people play better is often poorly recieved, no matter how you phrase it); but if you care about your personal performance then you shouldn't be willing to settle for only doing the bare minimum expected of you.

[FoxyAreku]

Only read the tl'dr, but I have literally never been chastised for DPSing as a healer.

Why?

Because I'm not awful, and only an idiot would complain about extra damage going out. As long as people don't die, no one tends to care.

[missybee]

Healing in XIV is fine as it is.

It was made easier to accommodate people who couldn't handle stance dancing, and if I am completely honest, it feels a lot more streamlined without having to (potentially) gamble on Cleric Stance.

People aren't struggling with content that doesn't matter. If healers want to go ham with the DPS in roulettes, what does it matter so long as everyone lives? If healers want to be lazy and do the Manderville throughout the duration of the roulette, kick them or deal with your slow clear.

SE isn't going to go back and re-work healer to make it HARDER after just making it easier. Hell, mana management is one of the few things that has become "harder" on healer, and even that tends to be pretty negligible (outside of needing to raise 482 people as a result of them dying to stupid).

I mean, if they wanted to add a harder healer class, I guess they could? People are still raging trash piles on healer as it is though, so it seems kind of pointless.