Idea to fix controversy about healer dps.

[Ghishlain]

I mean, the best way to fix the issue is to fix the healing end of healers so that you need to spend more time focused on it. With the amount of content that can be healed with 25% uptime, it's not surprising there is an issue.

But yes, if we assume that healing will remain a part time job for healers and that we need something to fill the void, having DPS spells do something for your healing spells isn't a bad idea.

Just to add to Risvertasashi's comment as well, even if the healing requirements were increased to be a bit more intensive, healing requirements will never change and cap at a finite amount. As healer's become more geared, reaching that finite HPS requirement becomes easier and easier, thus allowing for more DPS uptime.

Increasing the healer requirement would only be a small stop gap at reducing total DPS unless it was raised to the point where a healer would have to be healing constantly, which would then result in a different issue - healer's not having enough resources to actually heal through a fight until geared up to a certain point and even then once they surpass that point, we'll probably start seeing DPS again.

There's no real easy solution to the current healer DPS paradigm because current content design doesn't allow for much healing flexibility.

[Tridus]

Just to add to Risvertasashi's comment as well, even if the healing requirements were increased to be a bit more intensive, healing requirements will never change and cap at a finite amount. As healer's become more geared, reaching that finite HPS requirement becomes easier and easier, thus allowing for more DPS uptime.

Yes, but it doesn't have to start that way. There's not a lot of content that requires healing even half the time when it's brand new, let alone more than that. When you start there, it's not surprising you become a glorified DPSer very quickly.

Increasing the healer requirement would only be a small stop gap at reducing total DPS unless it was raised to the point where a healer would have to be healing constantly, which would then result in a different issue - healer's not having enough resources to actually heal through a fight until geared up to a certain point and even then once they surpass that point, we'll probably start seeing DPS again.

I don't consider having to manage resources and having people not cause unnecessary healing to be bad things. That's part of healing in most other MMOs. The fact that it's virtually impossible to run healers out of resources outside of Raise spam now is one of the problems with healing here.

There's a fairly wide gap between "once you outgear the fight you can add some DPS" and "when the fight is new you'll still be DPSing 2/3 of the time."

There's no real easy solution to the current healer DPS paradigm because current content design doesn't allow for much healing flexibility.

Agreed, it's a multi-faceted problem. But aside from content design, the healing design itself is part of the problem. MP restoration is too easy, and burst healing is far, far too powerful. I mean, part of the reason content becomes "blast everyone to 1 HP and then do AoE shortly afterward that requires everyone to be topped back up" is because healers can do that. Moderate damage is absolutely no threat whatsoever when a pair of healers can burst heal an entire raid back to full in seconds.

Heals are far, far too powerful relative to HP pools and incoming damage. There needs to be a rethink on how the whole healing model works for 5.0 because there's no real flexibility for the encounter designers to use right now. You can't run healers OOM and you can't threaten the group with less than massive damage. That leads to this whole "burst heal everyone back up and then toss more rocks" paradigm.

You'd get less healer DPS and less complaints about it if the "heal" part of "healer" was more work than it is now, which is exactly why this isn't such an issue in other games. Healers are busy healing and actually at risk of going OOM so they prioritize that and any DPS they can sneak in is a bonus for good play instead of the baseline.

[Ghishlain]

-snip-

I agree with a healer redesign from a kit perspective, but they do have to be careful about how much they nerf the healer / tank kits. If they nerf it too hard then then we will run into necessitating gear before being able to clear content that would lead to 3-4 week clears that we saw in Gordias and Midas. I know not everyone will think that's bad but at the same time there those two raid cycles nearly buried the raiding scene six feet under as well.

I also feel the difficulty of the healer checks revolve around how mechanics are made too for Savage tier content. A failed mechanic is either a wipe / death, so there's nothing to "heal" per say. We either heal that raid buster or pick that person up off the ground with few things in between usually. More Prey type mechanics and more frequent tank buster mechanics (even shared to put emphasis on the myriad of mitigation tools available to a raid) would help out with that. Reverting MP tools to how they were in 3.X would also increase the challenge of resource management.

I wouldn't mind a higher healing check - I am generally an easy person to please in terms of content so if they kept content as it is or start tweaking to frequency of unavoidable damage, I'd find a way to work around it and enjoy myself. I'm one of those types of players who believe that a healer's primary function is maintaining party health but at the same time I understand that's an extremely low bar too if all a healer does is push green-healy buttons because that's how it feels healer's were design - huge heals at the press of a singular button. I've always felt healer's were designed to be "easy" in XIV as a means to encourage more casual players to try it out but that then leads to high-tier healers being bored out of their mind if they aren't using their DPS abilities.

Hopefully we see a change in content and healer design in 5.X to actually make raid healing more challenging from a "healer" perspective.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I also feel the difficulty of the healer checks revolve around how mechanics are made too for Savage tier content. A failed mechanic is either a wipe / death, so there's nothing to "heal" per say.

This stems from what Tridus eluded to. The developers have essentially backed themselves into a corner since the only threatening mechanics is things which will kill you outright or come incredibly close. Even God Kefka's aoe damage isn't the frightening aspect. It's the fact he reduces you to 1HP then spams raid wide aoes. Likewise, both he and Exdeath used gimmicks that require everyone to be at 100%, thereby forcing more healing. If healers couldn't bring you from 1 to 70,000 in seconds, you could have less OHKO mechanics as damage would be threatening again.