Idea to fix controversy about healer dps.

[RopeDrink]

EDIT: Moving previous post to new page.

Ironically, above methods have no sympathy for those who are actually happy to DPS. I'll be honest, if they reworked Healers into a position where they typically favour 'always healing', that'd be far less interesting to those who enjoy the fact that they can go above Healing and contribute elsewhere (in this case, doing damage). I love DPS'ing as a Healer and I'll laugh at anyone who tells me in a Dungeon that I shouldn't be doing so -- but it's not that I love DPS'ing as a Healer that makes me enjoy playing a Healer in FFXIV, it's the versatility of being able to do so that is appealing. I'm neither filling HP bars nor 'hitting tings till dey ded', I'm doing ALL of that. It is why classes such as WHM (which some will tell you they found 'boring' or 'basic') doesn't bore me at all as I'm constantly going between a healing powerhouse and a damage contributor, with a side-order of shielding/buffing, albeit only slightly.

It's safe to assume SE won't adopt any method that drastically alters things - not only are they backed into a development corner based on how the game currently functions, but they'd also upset too many people on any end of a spectrum by throwing a spanner in the works too heavily. As we all know, no matter how well intentioned a change, or even how necessary a change may be, someone out there is going to hate it. Some DPS-Healers and Netflix Healers may not want to 'heal more', the Healer-Purists may not want to 'damage more', some want more buffers no matter what way the wind is blowing etc.

I honestly think that increasing versatility across the board (including Tanks, Healers and DPS) would be a better start compared to increasing the amount of Healing or DPS. Example, even having old ST-Stoneskin back would allow the likes of WHM to dedicate time towards pre-casting a barrier to nullify or dampen certain harsh mechanics. I'm not asking for that, just giving an example of how you can throw in 'more to do' without it necessarily being tied to healing or DPS, without encroaching on, say, SCH who is a more shield-orientated play-style and causing homogeny.

You are suggesting that healers spam AoE heals and HoTs to give a near permanent 20% damage buff. WHM, in particular, would be come so incredibly broken and mind numbing to play.

Triple-pack pull > Cure III, Benedict, Tetra, Quick-Cast, HOLY. So long, trash packs.

[Seraphor]

Essential dignity lists a potency of 400 so I assumed that to be a base potency which is available regardless of current HP. If that's not the case then the skill would definitely need to be adjusted.

You would never use Essential Dignity at full or near full HP to use it as a 400 potency heal. You'd get more mileage out of benefic/respected benefic.
You use ED when at low HP to make use of it as a 1000+ potency heal that takes the target up to near full HP.
It could never over heal.

[Seraphor]

It's really not difficult to DPS in your healing downtime.

You heal when needed, as first priority, then when you have the opportunity you can DPS.

This overheal buff mechanic wouldn't do anything for people who want a slower gameplay experience, it would just for them into confirming to the 'always be casting' method without the excuse of 'healers shouldn't dps'.

[tdb]

I'm sorry, but no. This is a terrible idea. Overhealing is like... the easiest thing to do. You are suggesting that healers spam AoE heals and HoTs to give a near permanent 20% damage buff. WHM, in particular, would be come so incredibly broken and mind numbing to play.

Yes, the current healing spells seem to be designed for intermittent use. There are no mechanics like the combos most DPS and tank classes have, or the aetherflow / dreadwyrm cycles of SMN, or the umbral/astral cycle of BLM. In fact, if you play a healer as pure heals, it's already mind-numbingly boring. But in the current battle system, it's not really possible to make healing more interesting because HP pools fill up so quick and overhealing is useless. The overhealing mechanic would need to be accompanied with other changes to the healer toolset in order to keep the game balanced.

Side note: you can fail at reducing enemy HP to 0. It's called hitting an enrage timer.

Technically yes. But at least in old content that just doesn't happen. I've had some amazingly bad dps through DF who have pathetic damage output and force me to spend the majority of time healing and rezzing by standing in every stupid imaginable, thus dragging on the fight. And yet I've to hit a single hard enrage timer. There's been exactly one fight which nearly failed due to insufficient DPS and that was the second boss of Sastasha hard. The boss normally can get off 2-3 shots before being interrupted, but with this group he got 6-7. Since each shot is more powerful than the last, towards the end it got really difficult to keep everyone alive. It took something like five tries until we finally lucked out and the boss killed both DPS just before we defeated him. Me and the tank then battled on against the remaining adds and I rezzed the DPS as soon as I had a chance.

I haven't unlocked any Lv70 content yet so I don't know if the situation is different there.

Ironically, above methods have no sympathy for those who are actually happy to DPS. I'll be honest, if they reworked Healers into a position where they typically favour 'always healing', that'd be far less interesting to those who enjoy the fact that they can go above Healing and contribute elsewhere (in this case, doing damage). I love DPS'ing as a Healer and I'll laugh at anyone who tells me in a Dungeon that I shouldn't be doing so -- but it's not that I love DPS'ing as a Healer that makes me enjoy playing a Healer in FFXIV, it's the versatility of being able to do so that is appealing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine with dealing damage as a healer when there's nothing worth healing. If anything, I think the DPS toolsets of healers are too simple and boring. But since some people seem to think healers shouldn't DPS I'm exploring some alternative mechanics.

I honestly think that increasing versatility across the board (including Tanks, Healers and DPS) would be a better start compared to increasing the amount of Healing or DPS. Example, even having old ST-Stoneskin back would allow the likes of WHM to dedicate time towards pre-casting a barrier to nullify or dampen certain harsh mechanics. I'm not asking for that, just giving an example of how you can throw in 'more to do' without it necessarily being tied to healing or DPS, without encroaching on, say, SCH who is a more shield-orientated play-style and causing homogeny.

I liked FF13's battle system with its six distinct roles. Compared to that most MMORPGs with their holy trinity are just bland. It also seems that modern MMORPGs don't have much in the way of external buffs or debuffs. In FF13 I might have the synergist apply 5+ different buffs to each member of the party. In FFXIV we have protect and that's it for long-duration buffs. There are some short-duration beneficial effects like heal over time, shields and enmity redirection, but I don't know if any of those count as proper buffs given their transient nature. I'm not counting procs and such either since those are subsumed into the normal rotation.

Out of the MMORPGs I've played, Anarchy Online is the king of versatility. Besides the usual three roles it also had buffing and debuffing roles, and most of its classes were not limited to just one role. The bureaucrat had all sorts of debuffs and CC and was a decent DPS besides. The meta-physicist was a one-man army with three different pets that could all be used at once. The soldier was a DPS class who could double as a shield-based tank and could give a significant damage reduction for the whole team. The agent had this gimmick where they could assume the guise of another class and use a subset of their abilities. With most classes having some desirable long-duration buffs (most lasted 30-60 minutes, some up to 8 hours) it was not unusual to have 10+ active buffs at once. There was a storage space mechanic for buffs so you'd often optimize for a particular set of buffs. Of course this had the downside of hunting down all the correct classes to get your buffs. Many players resorted to creating a second free-to-play account with characters they could use to buff themselves.

This overheal buff mechanic wouldn't do anything for people who want a slower gameplay experience, it would just for them into confirming to the 'always be casting' method without the excuse of 'healers shouldn't dps'.

Well obviously, as that was pretty much the whole point of my suggestion. I'm well aware that in the field of computer games, there isn't a single idea that would be liked by everyone. This one was designed to give healers some utility for healing constantly.

[RopeDrink]

But since some people seem to think healers shouldn't DPS I'm exploring some alternative mechanics.

I will never entertain anyone with that particular mentality given 99% of content boils down to predictable (often timed and looped) mechanics that any experienced Healer can and will typically learn to be prepared for. I also find that Healers willing to DPS (excluding those prone to tunnel-vision) are actually quicker to react to Healing than the AFK variety.

Meanwhile, after entering a dungeon like Bardem via roulette a month ago, our under-geared tank (quite randomly, I might add) pulled multiple trash just before the second boss before I could protest. I love big pulls as much as the next WHM, but as we know, Bardem is one of the few 'spike' dungeons - and our tank had struggled even with single-trash pulls beforehand due to gear and inexperience - so I have absolutely no idea what possessed them to do a 2.5 trash pull, thus the tank was getting casually annihilated to the usual sound of me spewing out Cure II constantly and praying it's enough, though me being me, also trying to pepper in QC-Holy to create breathing space whenever I had an opening. The DPS overall was low, so I could either rely solely on mashing one button and draining MP, or trying to push them along a little and ease the burden via a few dead targets.

In the end, it was still a pointless wipe, to which our so called "I'm an AST main and I can heal this perfectly fine" DPS proceeded to claim that if I wasn't throwing in 'damage' and throwing out more Cure's, things would have been fine. The above was not an enjoyable experience, even if some would say the 'oh noes' moments are what make things interesting, partially because I knew the guy was trying to pull reasons out of his backside and ignoring the weaknesses of the entire team by focusing on one possibility, but also because it is one the cases of 'more healing =/= better'.

I can't see the 'need for more healing' being an answer, nor a reduction to DPS potential just because Joe Soap thinks we should be standing on the side-lines drooling over party HP bars only rather than actually doing something useful when nobody is in need of mending.

However, if there were some more versatile options stuck in-between the two, even if they don't center on healing or damage at all, I still think this would not only scratch the itch a lot of Healers get during downtime but also add something to what can be considered somewhat stale gameplay of Healers in general, especially classes like WHM given the general consensus regarding Lily's.

[RopeDrink]

Random (possibly extremely bad) ideas off the top of my head with little thought or consideration (more to explain possibilities).

Have DB turn into Stoneskin on tri-lily, or return Stoneskin as an exclusive ability but have it tied solely to Lily's in some manner, such as being entirely uncastable without Lily's and being in combat (so we don't go back to the whole 'let's cast stoneskin on everyone before a fight' nonsense).
Have existing spells take on a new form based on how many Lily's someone has, or an extra effect (rather than pure CD reduction). As an extreme example, a 3 Lily Assize casting a free holy. OP, I know, but you get the idea.

I say the above as someone who would actually prefer not to have to be stringent with Lily's, just giving possible ideas. I most certainly do not want to be put into a position where we should be made feel we should not cast certain spells before generating 3 Lily's, or that we have to 'cure for the sake of it'. Again, really don't know how you would fix the issue by centring entirely on Healing or DPS - prefer they took an alternate route that also spiced up what we do presently.

[aqskerorokero]

As a tank main, I wish all dps stances give some sort of negative affect like lower defence or hp by 25%, then if the party wants to do more dps it has to face more risk, more risk more healing.

[Tridus]

As a tank main, I wish all dps stances give some sort of negative affect like lower defence or hp by 25%, then if the party wants to do more dps it has to face more risk, more risk more healing.

Two of them do, by removing that 20% mitigation you get from them. It's just that said mitigation doesn't tend to matter in most 70 content because a cooldown is sufficient, and there's a bazillion tank cooldowns.

[kidalutz]

Please don't speak for every healer. I for one don't feel comfortable DPSing in PuGs unless I'm certain the tank is not gonna slam their face into a cliff side or the real DPS is going to actually pay attention and not draw aggro off the tank by ignoring the one tanks building aggro on(This happens from Satasha on more often than not). Is it boring sometimes and sometimes I got to fight the urge to fall asleep but I would rather make 100% certain that my party is the one that can handle me DPSing and healing people shouldn't expect healers to DPS at all and need to get over the entitlement factor of oh it makes it faster.I would rather the run go just a hair slower and everyone go home without death damage to their gear.

I would rather a party focus on mechanics and not tunnel vision bosses. Most important I would rather the run be an enjoyable experience it's not enjoyable when you're new, nobody is helping, and you're spending more time on the floor than standing up because the healer was worried about looking bad by not DPSing.

[VanilleFang]

snip.

With enough practice you can easily heal and DPS. I always DPS as WHM, regardless of how new I am to the content. Granted I DPS more aggressively when I'm comfortable with the content but I never just relegate myself to just healing. Why? Because healing is easy and powerful. OGCDs are incredibly useful to use between DPS spells, for example. I have never been in a situation where I needed to go 100% healbot.

How is "Oh it makes it faster" entitlement? It's a fact. If the healer can DPS while still healing enough to keep the party alive and healthy than the healer should do that. It makes content go faster, and it allows the healer to get better at their job. Like RopeDrink said, healers who DPS are generally quicker in the healibg upkeep. Not only are they quicker but they are more likely to be more efficient and more likely to use the proper tool for the situation. Learning the DPS consistently while not needing to heal helps teach the healer to better manage their CDs, MP, and GCDs.