O5N is unfair for pure healer

[NephthysVasudan]

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Problem is I strongly disagree with any kind of dps rotation.

Healers need to keep healing first...dps second. People just need to wake up and get up off their healing ass and contribute with DPS.... with just Stone IV and Aero II/III alone I can break noses with the best of them and still manage to heal the party as needed.

making it more complex because its "boring" to do dps would make me just quit healing all together (its complicated enough to handle rapidly changing party dynamics AND DPS)
This mindset of everyone do DPS DPS DPS DPS is infectious and fool-hearty if you ignore the primary purpose of the job...that being..Heal....THEN do damage...and you don't have to do much to make a dent...seriously...very little in fact. Meld some critical in there with determination or whatever you prefer and you'll find yourself getting yelled at for stealing aggro in dungeons (white mage context).

Buff AST for DPS? sure.. i can get behind that..but no more than that.

[Vhailor]

If you want to play a game that requires more healing then go find a game that requires you to do more healing. Stop trying to make a game into a different game. You're just being selfish if you think the game should change to fit your own personal desires

I hate to contribute to an obvious troll thread, but your post interested me.

Edit / Disclaimer: I have absolutely no problem with Healers being tasked with damage dealing as well. I don't like to sit bored, personally, and while I'd hardly hold myself up to the best of them, I'll cast offensive spells whenever I can. I'm commenting purely on the idea that people should simply accept a game - particularly an MMO - as some sort of static creation that shouldn't fundamentally change over time.

The response I have to this is, why NOT try to make XIV into a different game? Most long-running games of this nature evolve through their lifespan, and such evolution is of great benefit to them. FFXI, as an immediate example, went through at least three paradigm shifts in terms of how leveling was handled (pre-ToAU; ToAU to pre-Abyssea; post-Abyssea). These changes altered preferred party structures, which in turn altered how jobs played. Bard, for instance, was incredibly different pre-ToAU from post-ToAU. Say what you will about each specific change, but it certainly kept the game feeling different every few years. WoW, as another example - which I haven't played, just to clarify - has undergone multiple changes to its Talent system, from Dual Talent Specialization to the Mists of Pandaria revamp. These changes routinely ushered in new playstyles and new options for people.

And finally, FFXIV itself just went through a significant evolution in order to reduce skill bloat. The difference was that, unlike FFXI's evolution or WoW's evolution or the evolution of a variety of other MMOs, FFXIV wasn't very ambitious. Its changes didn't alter HOW we played jobs; they simply made it easier to play them, involving fewer button presses.

And therein lies the problem with FFXIV, and the reason so many people want to change it: unlike FFXI, and unlike WoW, and even unlike FFXIV 1.0, FFXIV really isn't growing. The mechanics of fights evolve over time, which is good, but the core of FFXIV - how jobs are played, and the type of content we do with them - has remained essentially static since the release of ARR. That's a huge problem for the game, and it's one a lot of us are worried about.

So, by all means, feel free to be satisfied with FFXIV as it currently stands, and to not want any sort of real alterations. But it represents a giant deviation from the norm for long-running MMOs, and in my opinion, it's a poor choice.

[RiyahArp]

I'm not sure you can make healer DPS rotations more satisfying. We'd either have to heal purely through OGCDs, or we'd end up breaking our combo often enough to make DPSing pointless unless the fight is totally mastered. And I'm willing to bet a lot of the reason why we have anti DPS healers was due to how awful them trying to make Healer DPS interactive ended up; you could kill your tank easily just by buffering cleric stance too soon or forgetting to put it back off. Dpsing as a healer was a lot less fun in HW, unless the content was so trivial the tank could heal themselves.

[The_Promised]

I read on that post that someone said for the BLM to stop dps hard on big pulls... Really???? If you are with envy about the blm aoe damage just be one dps and do more damage than the him/she. Also all mmos are the same and all healers should be heal/dps and tanks should tank/dps.

[loreleidiangelo]

I'm not sure you can make healer DPS rotations more satisfying. We'd either have to heal purely through OGCDs, or we'd end up breaking our combo often enough to make DPSing pointless unless the fight is totally mastered. And I'm willing to bet a lot of the reason why we have anti DPS healers was due to how awful them trying to make Healer DPS interactive ended up; you could kill your tank easily just by buffering cleric stance too soon or forgetting to put it back off. Dpsing as a healer was a lot less fun in HW, unless the content was so trivial the tank could heal themselves.

I think Cleric Stance was a pretty poor attempt at arbitrary difficulty, yes. I don't think that's the limit of the devs' brain power when it comes to more engaging healer play, no. Combos also aren't the only way to make healer DPS involve more button presses than 3 (2 if you're AST LOL) - procs can also work, as well as better use of the resource mechanics we have in-game.

For instance, SCH's Aetherflow stacks are a mechanic that impacts both SCH healing and DPS (though a suggestion I would make is for Energy Drain to be a bit more impactful damage-wise so SCHs have a risk factor with a good payoff involved to choose using it over Lustrate/Indom). WHM's Lilies, though? The only "damage" move it affects is Assize, and since Assize also does healing and mana restore no matter the situation there's no real risk for a WHM choosing to burn Lilies on that (obviously WHM Lily mechanic has other issues but this is just an example). AST has Earthly Star as the closest thing to a risk/reward resource, and it's the same as Assize - as long as someone is standing in it and the boss is standing in it it gets value on both ends - the only place where it has a choice element is if the AST is using it for healing out of range of the boss or using it for damage when nobody is standing in it (extremely unlikely, you'll at least heal the tank with it).

Tbh, I'd also like to see some real elements of mana pressure added to this game - with the number of ridiculously strong oGCDs we have coupled with BRD/MCH Refresh and our own mana CDs, managing it is a joke outside of chain raises and those usually spell a wipe to enrage anyway. It's not a total fix to how easy healer DPS is to manage here but it's better than nothing. Even some interaction like Broil doing more damage if Shadowflare is on the target or something might push for a SCH to identify that window when their damage spells have the most value and coordinate with their co-healer in a raid so they can maximize it (while IMO not really having a huge penalty for less-skilled healers who don't optimize like that).

I think there are options, suffice it to say. It's not like I'm advocating for 5 extra DPS buttons to spam that all have to be comboed together in order with no interruptions in-between - there's a line between engagement and tedium, and I acknowledge that. But are healers really having fun using 1-2 DoTs and a filler, or putting a regen effect on the tank and spamming a singular AOE? I feel like if SE wants to continue the design trend of healers in this game being damaging hybrids they ought to just embrace it and make the "damage" aspect a full-fledged part of our kit, with actual interaction to it.

[Viz79]

Cleric Stance was never an attempt at increased difficulty - in fact if anything it was poor foresight on the devs part on not realising what the community would do with that skill. Towards the end it was expected for healers to jump in and out of cleric stance to maximise dps. I personally found the whole system clunky and unpleasant - and by the time I got used to it, they removed it. Thing is, Yoshi P did say he never intended for healers to have that pressure put on them when they're supposed to 'heal' first and foremost rather than worry about being in the right stance etc.

However in terms of healing, i do think the devs expect healers to use all of their skills and it's silly (and I would think quite boring/lazy) not to throw on a dot or dps when you can. As a scholar I absolutely love being able to help with dps with dots/bane etc along with broil and with just pure heals, I would likely stop being a healer quite simply because it wouldn't be very interesting.

[Connor]

The developers have backed themselves into a 'balancing corner' with healer. What this means is that very little feedback on healers will actually be taken into account.

If healers were changed to be 'pure healers', they'd be standing around doing nothing for the majority of the game and eventually be replaced with Red Mages / Paladins (the healing might suck but at least they can contribute dps every now and then)

If healers were given a dps rotation their damage output would have to increase from what it is now (otherwise you're putting in more effort for literally no reward, and even less people would roll healer). In this scenario, healers could probably replace dps comfortably - at least in most content that isn't savage or ultimate (which is the majority of the game).

Even the extremely common but popular concept of a healer that heals through dealing damage just can't be balanced. Either the dps is too high to warrant also healing from it, or the dps is so low that it doesn't warrant doing. If all of the healer's dps abilities generate healing, I shouldn't need to explain how this would be very difficult to balance in a dps-oriented game like XIV. If only a few / one or two dps abilities generate healing, how can the job match it's supposed identity? In a middle ground where it does medium dps and thus medium healing, what would stop people from stacking the job and meeting the dps and healing requirements simultaneously? Why take anything other than 1 or 2 tanks and 6 healers who are also dps?

FFXIV's battle system is entirely 'dps' based; this goes for all jobs and all roles. If you are doing no damage on any job you instantly become a huge dead weight to the party, regardless of what you're doing. As far as I'm aware, there is literally no content that ever has or will exist in the game where an individual can take on a dedicated healing or support role unless you count pre-4.0 PvP, and even then dealing damage is now crucial for every role (healers have additional effects added to dps abilities such as granting Aetherflow stacks or Crowd Control).

It's very unfortunate that FFXIV will never have a truly engaging 'healing' system as there is for 'dps'; personally I'm one of those filthy rats who likes being a healer because they're passive and supporting - a healer like a doctor or nurse- not because they're combat medics / soldiers / 'higher skill'. Seeing XIV forgo that somewhat entrenched MMO identity of healers being supportive and pacifistic, choosing to help instead of kill, really feels like they're leaving a great big hole that a lot of players like myself won't ever see filled.

All in all, there's next to nothing the developers can do to ever bring a 'pure healer' class/role to XIV; it's simply no longer possible unless someone here is willing to volunteer to provide the resources to create A Realm Reborn: But This Time With Real Healers

[Ametrine]

Someone mentioned earlier an interesting difference of FFXIV's mechanic that affects healers. We don't need to keep debuffs/buffs going in contant for certain bosses. To give healers dynamic gameplay, we just got our own attacks instead.

[Kiryuin-Satsuki]

I'm all for increasing the outgoing damage in general from mobs just so all the lazy dogs self-identifying as 'pure healers' don't get the luxury of standing around doing nothing. However, I'll go right ahead and put money on the fact that all it's going to accomplish is cause the very same players to whine that their role is now too demanding after requiring more than 5 apm, and that their paper-thin bullshit defense of "I swear I wouldn't stand around if I had to do more healing!!!1 XD" turns out to be nothing but dribble.

OP might be using the most low-hanging, obvious bait imaginable, but do go ahead and answer for us, 'pure healers', do the DPS aspects of your kit only function when you don't have other people to do the work for you? How DO you get past the ghosts in O5? Do you just sit in the carriage with your thumbs up your asses, endlessly healing yourselves until the party outside has finished up? Don't make me laugh.

[MrSmiley]

"pure healers" get me killed sitting around doing nothing far more often than "dps healers". I'm sure some of them really want a class that only heals, but a lot of them just want an excuse to not do anything and don't pay attention as a result. I remember having a healer argue with a dps about how it wasn't his job to do damage. My health dipped dangerously low to entire dungeon and I died twice with him in a nearly full mp bar.

Most healers I play with mix damage in though, I don't see those very often.