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

[Naunet]

I agree healer dps can be dull but due to the nature of healing healers can't have strict or complex dps rotations. If they did then switching to healing could massively gimp their dps. I don't think anyone should expect healers to have a complex dps system anyway. If you want to play a class that has an interesting dps system...play a dps.

I agree that our damage rotation shouldn't be complex. However, when it is the thing I'm spending the vast majority of my time doing, I have to wonder why I'm called a healer.

[loreleidiangelo]

I agree that our damage rotation shouldn't be complex. However, when it is the thing I'm spending the vast majority of my time doing, I have to wonder why I'm called a healer.

To wit, I actually pulled up my own FFLogs on our recent raid clear this week just to get a better grasp of how many globals I spend healing vs DPSing.

45%. I spend 45% of my time casting a DPS ability in what is supposed to be the hardest content of this game...as a HEALER. Of my healing abilities, a shocking 95% of them are actually just AOE heals, because sustain/spot-healing is a non-existent concept to Square Enix so all I have to do after predictable raid-wide AOE is Helios up or pop Earthly Star. In the interests of fairness, I raid as Noct AST so our WHM keeps a Regen on the MT at all times, but...I feel like tank damage shouldn't be such a non-factor in these fights that they're basically handled simply by tank cooldown usage, instant casts and REGEN.

But seriously. For every 1.1 healing spell I cast, I cast a DPS spell too. That's almost a 1-1 ratio, and I guarantee if I weren't a relatively conservative healer when it comes to progression my DPS casts would actually overtake my healing ones.

[Ametrine]

If you don't mind, how was the other healer playing, and how much of that 45/55 split was dedicated to card management? I'm genuinely curious how that fell.

AST heals are tuned extra high from having fewer pure heal skills, so I'm curious if the card dependency skews it, or if the WHM was just in main healer mode and made the difference enough that you could spend half the raid in DPS mode.


I think that's a more interesting discussion in regards to why healers DPS so much. Double healers mean we can? Heals are tuned super high? Verses I spend more time mashing the heal button in WoW, why not here, too??

[loreleidiangelo]

If you don't mind, how was the other healer playing, and how much of that 45/55 split was dedicated to card management? I'm genuinely curious how that fell.

AST heals are tuned extra high from having fewer pure heal skills, so I'm curious if the card dependency skews it, or if the WHM was just in main healer mode and made the difference enough that you could spend half the raid in DPS mode.


I think that's a more interesting discussion in regards to why healers DPS so much. Double healers mean we can? Heals are tuned super high? Verses I spend more time mashing the heal button in WoW, why not here, too??

Our WHM has never really seemed fond of DPSing, though for the fight I pulled for my example (Exdeath), I was actually outhealing her and keeping up on DPS. This is prog, and I tend to pick up mechanics faster, so as our group gets content on farm she'll take over the bulk of the healing and I'll put out even more bongos DPS relative to HPS. For our "farm" clears this week (OS1-3), she outheals me pretty handily, though I come out ahead on DPS.

If you want my opinion on your final question, I do think heals are just plain tuned too high in this game. Solo healing OS4 has already been done, and it's not an uncommon story for pretty much every raid tier we've ever had. My personal suspicion is that both tanking and healing in XIV were made relatively simple so as to not pressure people out of the role, but I don't think the developers really anticipated what sort of effect that would have on players at the higher echelons of skill. They've tried to curb the debate somewhat with their various statements on the subject but the truth is, short of making healing significantly harder at the base level the current situation we're seeing is just what's going to be.

I like discussing it, because I'm passionate about the healers I play in every MMO. But I've also come to terms with the fact that it's not going to change here.

[Snow_Princess]

A fair question, with what I feel is a reasonable answer: because the way healing is structured is currently creates a massive chasm in the balancing of raid encounters in XIV.And I don't say this JUST because of how fast they get cleared, but because of the devs' admission that healer DPS isn't being factored into raid balancing.

Unless they're outright lying about that (which I doubt they'd do), the difficulty curve of raid encounters is going to continue to plummet right at the point where everyone in the raid can dodge the avoidable damage, because right THERE is where the amount of healing healers need to do drops to bare minimum and they can instead turn all that extra mana into DPS.

This is why the developers have themselves in a catch-22: if they design raids with the idea that healers will be DPSing, healers in raids where people are still occasionally taking avoidable damage will suffer horribly. If they continue designing them without the expectation of healer DPS, groups that can avoid all of the avoidable damage will steamroll the encounter because they can meet the DPS checks THAT much quicker.

It all centers around how players take damage in raid encounters. Most damage is either AA to the tank, unavoidable AoE to the whole raid, or avoidable telegraphs.

I respect their decision to add a skill check in that some damage is avoidable, but the flipside of that is that groups who can avoid this damage can essentially trivialize DPS checks, which creates the aforementioned chasm.

Hmm, missed my point, let me try in a different way.

Tanks do not go Rampart > sentinel > combo action +300 enmity, they go Fast blade > savage blade > Rage of halone, a DPS ROTATION, a tank using a DPS rotation, to tank and deal damage, you use defense CDs as needed. How come you are not complaining about this? and just healing?

My point is, you can't change the game to make it immune for people to play bad, you have to learn to adjust. You are basically saying people play bad so healing is the problem, and that is why people are disagreeing with you. You also seem to need a bit more experence, based how you talk because you can't pinpoint if the true issues you ran into with healing is with:
Overpulling
Overpulling with too low ilevel
DPS not knowing rotations
DPS with too low ilevel
People standing in bad
Tank using CDs
Tank keeping agro? Y/n? (Back in HW I had a PLD in expert who couldn't keep hate off me on a boss despite me using quelling strikes)
Are you using cards/ lightspeed/ earthly star/Aspected Benefic/sleave draw/ Essential Dignity, Synastry, Largesse, and please don't forget there is Time Dilation, lot of ast neglect using it.

Repyling to what you said , even though it is off my point:
If they made savage DPS checks with healing damage accounted, (since they assume something of the likes of 90 ish% max DPS?) no one would be able to clear it. It is calculated on some ilevel people are under on day 1. They get around all that by penta melds and melding in vit on the right. This means the missing damage needs to come from somewhere and they said, if you enter salvage like that, OFC healers need to dps =/

Now I thought you where talking about personal experence in leveling DFs or something, now I am a bit lost what you are trying to get at. My guess the reason you are simply talking about that is because it is a long distance connection to your point healers should be requred heal more...

How about this, you suggest a design, abilities, etc and make a thread on that? The way you made this thread, and as said earlier the reasons you got the reactions you did is simply because you haven't leaned how to completely heal yet, like this post stated:

The only time I'm just standing around is if things went so south I burned my mana on too many rezzes. A part of my job as a healer is to gauge whether I should rez a downed player or focus on keeping the remaining players up, or possibly rez someone else. It happens.

I'm with Snow Princess on most of her points. Healing in FXIV is tuned to let us DPS, but if you go SO HARD on damage dealing that you can't swap to heals when someone eats it, then you are doing it wrong. That's a sign you haven't learned to manage your resources.

You are supposed to always leave yourself a safety net of MP while going on with DPS, and all three healers have multible methods to regain MP AND turn up the burst heals if they need to hurry. It's just proper CD usage. Thus my opening note. I may need to wait for Swiftcast. I may want to focus on less dead party members. It goes so many ways.

But that constant judging of situations is what Snow Princess is alluding to and something that comes with, you guessed it, experience!

OP just sounds like he never got past the growing pains.

That and letting shit players get to you is never going to help you. You don't owe assholes anything, and if it's SO bad, just leave. Report. Move on.

You need to understand (to TC), I am actually not debating you on how healer should be changed, it is more asking examine what you do, how you play, how others are playing and just try get more experience and aware of the situation so you can comment better with more knowledge. You can't even tell me where or more details on the story where you had mp problems because of some unexpected damage taken, what DF where you are in anyway?

I agree healer dps can be dull but due to the nature of healing healers can't have strict or complex dps rotations. If they did then switching to healing could massively gimp their dps. I don't think anyone should expect healers to have a complex dps system anyway. If you want to play a class that has an interesting dps system...play a dps.

That is what I was trying to explain to him, you can't make healers have rotations like DPS, that is why I bought up tanks who have DPS rotations. They do DPS rotations while having migration ogcds, not tank holding/migration rotations, despite being a tank. What I mean is you don't do rampart > Sentinel for some combo bonus. To me that is what the tc wants and I said no, try ninja, it might fit his play style more.

[Ametrine]

You need to understand (to TC), I am actually not debating you on how healer should be changed, it is more asking examine what you do, how you play, how others are playing and just try get more experience and aware of the situation so you can comment better with more knowledge. You can't even tell me where or more details on the story where you had mp problems because of some unexpected damage taken, what DF where you are in anyway?

What's funny is now that I think about it, the last instance I had major issues was Shinryu, pre-4.01 SCH buff. My way of managing the fight was to simply not DPS in those seconds I could breath and let my mana refresh. I couldn't afford it beyond keeping up DoTs.

I only mentioned jerks as the OP seems convinced these types of players are so prevalent. They aren't, but taking a no tolerance policy is my stance so I may just be shutting them down so much they can't get started.

I also own up to mistakes, and try to he as pleasant as possible. I've only had to make reports 4 times despite the time I've been around, and I've always mained healer. I honestly think the whole debacle of healers getting ripped into for lack of/too much DPS is vastly overblown, but the forums attract the most vocal players.

In fact, the only instance off the top of my head was the opposite happening. I had a healer (I was DPS on MCH) tell me to eat more attacks as she was bored. She never DPS'd, so I told her to try if she was that bored. She did not take that well, especially since I was Deeps. So I let that go.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I think that's a more interesting discussion in regards to why healers DPS so much. Double healers mean we can? Heals are tuned super high? Verses I spend more time mashing the heal button in WoW, why not here, too??

Content is simply undertuned in FFXIV because the devs cater towards the lowest common denominator; not the casual player, but the one who needs everything brain dead easy or they get frustrated. As Lorelei already outlined, even the harder content in the game allows for nearly 1:1 ratio. Elsewhere? You can have upwards of 70-80% DPS uptime as a healer. Unfortunately, the likelihood this ever changes is nil because they either don't realize or simply refuse to acknowledge where the problem lies. Yoshida was incessant healer DPS isn't required, but his expectations and community expectations will never align. He's not wrong. You could clear every piece of content with both healers at precisely zero DPS. Very few raiders will tolerant that in higher level content. And people in general dislike. So... what Yoshida wants doesn't really matter in such a scenario.

[Teraluna]

I just said it, and I know I'm not alone. :P

Ah you'll always dig another negative mindset out of the woodwork.

Why healing is broken? What?
Healing in this game is absolutely brilliant, one of the best examples of any mmo.
A pleasure to play, and long may it continue this way.

[loreleidiangelo]

Ah you'll always dig another negative mindset out of the woodwork.

Why healing is broken? What?
Healing in this game is absolutely brilliant, one of the best examples of any mmo.
A pleasure to play, and long may it continue this way.

By what metric, exactly? The fact that you can dish out non-insignificant quantities of DPS without struggling to keep a party healed? Or is there some facet of actual healing in XIV that you think is particularly well-done?

[Naunet]

Healing in this game is absolutely brilliant, one of the best examples of any mmo.

Because you spend more time dpsing than healing...? I'm having a hard time understanding how you could think this is "one of the best examples of any mmo". How do you find spamming dps spells, recovering after raid AoE in just a couple GCDs, and then going back to spamming dps fun and engaging?

The healing spells themselves are almost all rather uninspired as well. Single target heal. Larger single target heal. AoE heal. They rarely interact with each other. There's very little thought that goes into choosing which spell to use (in a raid setting, it's almost ALWAYS going to be the AoE heal). There's little to distinguish the three healing jobs from one another.