Idea to fix controversy about healer dps.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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5-10 minutes is a "hair slower" to you? Healer DPS can shave off considerable time; certainly more than you standing idle. How is it entitlement to expect everyone to contribute equally? There simply isn't enough outgoing damage in this game where healers can do little more than heal.

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Consider this, it took a poorly geared tank pulling the entire dungeon for you to finally bottom out healing them. That tells me how severely undertuned a lot of content is. No one is asking for healers to be turned into bots who do nothing but spam Cure II. We're suggesting more emphasise needs to be placed on actually healing. Every single piece of content in this game, including Savage, will generally allow for more DPS than healing. Even God Kefka, one of the more healing intensive fights, still allows for upwards of 60% DPS time. If not higher.

If healing wasn't so potent, it opens the door for more varied mechanics—both from the jobs themselves to the enemies who wouldn't be so dependent on near OHKOs to threaten you.

[Jellybums]

As a tank, I want a healers that DPS in their downtime, makes the grind go faster. As a healer, I make it a point to DPS in my downtime while minding my MP level especially in boss fights, and how much DPS I could do depends on the tank's skill and build. The ones built to do EX raids and running DFs, I'd feel like a scrub not dealing a good bit of damage. The squishy ones though (crap gear), and I've played one myself, healers are literally their bloodbags and you can't do much but spam heal in every encounter. The ones dying to mechanics though and blaming DPSing healers for their deaths (e.g. Eyes on Me in Dzemael, ground AOEs in Niddhog/Susano), I sure hope they're not behind this "controversy".

[miraidensetsu]

If healing in couples is that easy, how about encourage solo healing? And that extra healer spot can be used to turn the queues faster for DPS.

Formations like 1-6-1 should keep the healer busy enough actually healing.

[miraidensetsu]

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For me thats more like a group of elitists that found a way to show off themselves while shaming "the nub" with style than an actual controversy.

There is no doubt that the healer - as any caster should, since healers ARE casters - should be always casting something useful. This is a consensus.

But what the people here is doing is putting the healer that is serving as the squishy tank's bloodbag, who is somewhat forced to spam heals, on the same bag of those healers who just cast nothing for 8 seconds. The difference is to do any significant DPS, the first will have to stop casting his heals. And if he do that, the party wipes. Is he contributing? In some cases, the first healer is actually carring the party. And the first is being told he's as bad as the second during this "controversy", while his companions (even the squishy tank, the wall-2-wall puller without cooldowns or the blue DPS) are the 99th percentile.

[MoroMurasaki]

For me thats more like a group of elitists that found a way to show off themselves while shaming "the nub" with style than an actual controversy.

There is no doubt that the healer - as any caster should, since healers ARE casters - should be always casting something useful. This is a consensus.

But what the people here is doing is putting the healer that is serving as the squishy tank's bloodbag, who is somewhat forced to spam heals, on the same bag of those healers who just cast nothing for 8 seconds. The difference is to do any significant DPS, the first will have to stop casting his heals. And if he do that, the party wipes. Is he contributing? In some cases, the first healer is actually carring the party. And the first is being told he's as bad as the second during this "controversy", while his companions (even the squishy tank, the wall-2-wall puller without cooldowns or the blue DPS) are the 99th percentile.

... but you're not backed into a corner, spam healing a squishy tank most of the time. Not even sometimes. Most tanks are absolutely fine. I can honestly say I have never had a tank so bad that I could do no dps as a healer. Less? Sure. None? Nope.

No one is saying what you're accusing us of saying - this is a textbook strawman argumemt.

I doubt anyone would fault a healer for keeping a bad tank alive. Please, goahead and quote where anyone said you should prioritize dpsing over the lives of your party.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

[HoodRat]

Please, goahead and quote where anyone said you should prioritize healing over the lives of your party.

Edit incoming? :P

[RopeDrink]

I view it very simply. I'm there to keep people alive - which doesn't translate to 'I must heal people all the time'. If I walk into a roulette and get something like Ala Mhigo, where the first boss starts with a party-wide AoE that brings everyone down to 80%, there's literally no reason for me to heal that given there's a big window between that damage and the next bunch of mechanics, of which damage taken will then boil down to people reacting to the next phase. As long as the tank is good-to-go, I'm throwing stones. When the next phase is incoming, sure, I'll consider a MedII to top people up and ensure HoT's are running in-case people get burned, but there is NO reason for me to stop what I'm doing and heal immediately, or sacrifice 2.3k temp-DPS because health-bars don't happen to be full.

I will always be looking to punch out as much damage as I am humanly capable of, but only when I know I have done what I can to ensure people stay alive -- based on all the party-variables [tankiness, DPS, skill] VS. my own resources VS. what damage/mechanics we know are on the horizon. At no point has anyone here ever claimed that doing damage takes precedence over keeping the team alive. The key is in what people believe is required to fulfil that function. There are those out there who see a healthbar under <100% and immediately strive to fill it, even if that healthbar is being accosted by a measly trash-mob that does 1% health-damage every 2 seconds to an over-geared tank. If you choose to point at me for deciding to kill that mob instead of healing the tank, I'll laugh at you -- but if you point at me for choosing Stone over Healing when Kefka has Chyribdis into upcoming Ultima Upsurge, then you'd have ample cause for concern.

No one is asking for healers to be turned into bots who do nothing but spam Cure II.

Just backtracking to clarify - at no point did my post(s) claim this - the Bardem example was an external point used to describe a situation where Healing was stretched thin and was then at the brunt of the usual 'shoulda done more healing' nonsense at the hands of DPS who had no concerns. My overall opinion remains that both 'increasing healing requirement' (ie. remedy downtime through more healing -- nothing to do with 'cure-botting') as well as increasing damage-potential are both possibly wrong-answers. A neutral approach where we have more versatile tools to distribute or contribute would be a good middle-ground, helping to remedy downtime as well as address the general 'stale' state of Healing via additional tools and buffs. Shields are a simple example (which we'll avoid given it would encroach on an already existing shield-heavy healer), but it's just an example of a neutral approach.

[basketofseals]

If healing in couples is that easy, how about encourage solo healing? And that extra healer spot can be used to turn the queues faster for DPS.

Formations like 1-6-1 should keep the healer busy enough actually healing.

Believe it or not, you'll STILL have time to deal damage, although you'll probably have to switch to break for mana reasons.

This is of course assuming that 1 tank doesn't make the fight impossible, but I can't think of many fights that actually require two healers aside from distributed mechanics being screwy.

[MoroMurasaki]

Edit incoming? :P

Oh dip. You got me. I think, given the context, that that slip isn't the reason I haven't seen a reply though.

[Gemina]

I feel like this is so 2016, and hard to fathom that we are still stewing over this topic. The issue was never with the tool kits themselves, so modifying them really isn't going to change the meat of the issue which lies in the content of the game, and the attitude of the players. As an example, the ability Assize benefits both a healing minded and a DPS minded healer, yet a lot of WHMs don't utilize this skill, or not as often as they should.

I really hate seeing figures like 'healers have 60% downtime' or anything along those lines. Damage in this game varies on a lot of factors. The only figure that really matters is healers don't have to heal 100% of the time in any content, and there is nothing to punish healers for not filling the gap with DPS skills other than being scolded. But guess what? There also isn't much reward for adding the DPS other than a self pat on the back and maybe a few comms. Making healing more interesting for yourself and your mates by weaving in offensive skills between heals (or for others: weaving in heals between offensive skills) is a playstyle.

It is unfortunate that one playstyle benefits the entire group, while the other only benefits the player. However, it is fortunate that the heals-only playstyle doesn't hurt the group. So you honestly have to choose your battles, and luckily most of the battling happens here on the forums and not when peeps are actually playing and working towards a clear. I can say that when I tank, the only thing I care about the healer doing is keeping my butt alive. The regens, shields, ogcd heals, and timely cures are what I notice.