Healer DPS - enjoyable or a chore?

[Lubu_Mykono]

Oh god. I hate that so much.

"Raise me!"
Dude, chill. That's the second time you've died in the past 30 seconds and Swiftcast is still on CD.

Then the Red mage from the other alliance group revives the DPS and you are forced to blacklist.

[ko_]

Then the Red mage from the other alliance group revives the DPS and you are forced to blacklist.

How come? I don't get it. Why blacklist after the rdm raises? D:. I'm just a monk so I don't understand.

[KisaiTenshi]

It's generally agreed upon that healers should DPS when they can. In Savage, it's more or less imperative.

Nope, Yoshi-P said they do not design content with healer DPS taken into account. You can do whatever you want to squeak out more DPS if you have a competent party, but anyone who green DPS's is intentionally playing poorly. I also don't believe there really are that many "green DPS" out there, nor are there that many "heal-slave" types that do nothing but heal and watch netflix as some people would suggest. The issue is really that Red DPS try to play Healers like they were a DPS, and don't actually want to use the healing tools because they are stuck in the mindset that not maximizing DPS is playing poorly, when that isn't what they are there for.

Paradoxically, the consensus tends to be that the less time a healer spends actually healing, the more skilled they are (with exceptions, of course.)

When I heal, I adhere to this to the best of my ability, but I don't really enjoy it. I find healer DPS boring and unengaging, most of all because it involves spending 90% of the time hitting a single button and it often feels I'm trying to be a subpar DPS than a healer. While I certainly don't agree with not DPSing at all, I can understand to an extent the often parroted defence of "if I wanted to attack, I'd DPS." AST's card mechanic adds another dimension to gameplay that helps it feel less shallow to a degree, but I feel it quite strongly on the other jobs.

My own feelings aside, it brought to mind the question, is healer DPS actually enjoyable in its own right? Is it something healers generally like doing, or feel compelled to? To healers, given the option - would you keep it as is, prefer more of a focus on actual healing, or more expansive DPS options? Is the current method a fair way to judge healer skill?

(This is not a "should healers DPS" thread, but a given that they can and do.)

The developers can not make healer DPS more engaging because they need to be able to heal. Thus any kind of combo-system for a healer is inherently missing the point of the role, be it for DPS or Healing. Healing is situational. DPS is not. A DPS role can go a-b-c mindlessly and not touch the rest of their kit, they will still be putting out damage. A Healer who spams cure I-CureII-Cure III/Medica without there being anything to heal, not only wastes the MP, but affects the Tank's ability to hold enmity as well. What people fail to understand is that sometimes you should be doing nothing if you're about to overtake the tank. This is more a problem with Tank's not playing efficiently, but it's still a thing, especially on leveling content, where an overgeared healer can rip hate away from an undergeared tank, even when they're in tank stance.

I can't name a multiplayer game that has an effective support/healer role, the "healer role" is really something of a single-player game concept where you just have the healer spam heals every turn, where as tanks do not exist in single player. Usually you have the healer on the back row for the defensive bonus, because you want to prevent them from being KO'd by strong enemies.

Compare that to a MMORPG where the healer gets sidelined because players zerg the content. If the game's kept with it's design goals, the tank would not be out of tank stance except when they are solo or separated from the party, and the healer would not be out of healer stance except when they are solo or separated from the party. A healer who overheals would rip the hate away from the tank, and a tank who drops tank stance would reset their position in the hate list, thus certainly killing the healer. There are phases during some bosses where no incoming damage will be forthcoming for several seconds, and that is where the healer and tank could DPS freely. But outside of that, the tank and healer should not have the opportunity to DPS for more than 5 seconds, and that's where the game doesn't penalize parties for, when it should.

I've had people complain to me and my co-healer too when they die like 10 times that we should have healed them. But what can I do as White Mage when I raise someone and they run into the same AoE 1 second later when I already used Benediction on them before? If someone dies so many times in a Alliance Raid or dungeon it's 99% their fault. Please just don't ignore EVERY mechanic. At least TRY to dodge, TRY to turn around when there is an eye marker, TRY to stack with a stack marker, TRY to attack adds. But even when everyone else is stacking somewhere together, those people still just stand somewhere alone and attack the boss, not noticing anything around them. Yes, some people aren't very good at this game, and it's fine. But there are those that aren't trying at all. And those are the exact same people that think I could save them from dieing over and over again which is just not true at all. Healers don't make mechanics non-existant for other players. I'll heal them over and over again but fuller HP bars don't make them magically be immune against mechanics or one-shots.

Another case where those people complain: They are dead on the floor and I'm not raising them immediately. No one else need healing, so I dps - because Swiftcast will be up in less than 10 seconds and I can't hard-cast it because I know I'd have to move during it. They think I ignore them because I wait to raise them at the best time. Because they don't know anything about healing.


Or I do both by healing efficiently and not being unhelpful, disrespectful and idle when healing is not necessary.

The issue most of the time is that players try to immediately get back into the fight and not wait for their HP/MP/TP to recover, so they get flattened by the very next thing. This is especially problematic when you raise players who can heal or raise other players, because you want to hit your MP recovery skill so you can heal yourself, but the boss may have a mechanic that does significant damage, right after you hit the button, and thus you're back on the floor. Like the only skill you should be casting once revived is an oGCD heal on yourself, and unfortunately the meta is to waste oGCD's as much as possible. There are situations where a healer accepts a raise, and has literately nothing they can do, no MP, no oGCD's, so they die again. So a healer should not accept the raise until they can either use both oGCD heal on themselves and a MP recovery.

A Healer should be trying to raise any KO'd player, swiftcast or not, but this is another part of the game where really, they should have just redesigned Raise to include swiftcast, and then put the swiftcast part on cooldown, or reduce the swiftcast cooldown as part of using healing correctly without overheal like with Assize/Asylum. Yet if they did this, then there would really be no penalty to death. So perhaps really Swiftcast should just be removed, and Raise moved to oGCD and be part of the Assize/Asylum recast reduction pool.

It's not hard to see what the developers intents are behind most of the skills, and really, it seems like the developers want a completely different idea of how healing is being used, and thus players who play healers per the developers intent are labeled as being lazy, where as green DPS using the skills in a way not intended by the developers as dictated by a DPS min-max meta the developers ignored, end up being the preferred raid zerg strategy. Thus the arguments and fights that never end. I'm sure SE's data analytics show all these skills being used by the majority of the players, otherwise they wouldn't have changed cleric stance to begin with. Or perhaps they changed cleric stance to try and entice more players into the healer role and don't really care if a healer decides to Green DPS.

There are players who want to play a healer, and there are players who want to Green DPS, they are not the same. Healers do not want their role to be Green DPS, and didn't sign up for a PUG to Green DPS, thus any insinuation from the party they should DPS more is trolling and will be always be seen as unwanted criticism.

[MoroMurasaki]

snip.

Honestly... no one cares. No one cares what Yoshi-P thinks about this because he isn't the playerbase. No one cares what you think for a similar reason. FFXIV as a whole expects healers to do some dps and healers as a whole have agreed. Not everyone is doing 3k in Savage but the vast majority are doing some... and at the end of the day that's all we wanted.

At this point your stance on healer dps is comparable to that of a flat-earther. All logic and reason as well as popular opinion points one way. Observable facts point one way. Everything says healers should be dpsing... and then we have the flat earth community over here loudly complaining.

Your views on this are archaic and based on things like preconceived notions from other MMOs which just don't matter here or dev comments from more than 3 years ago. We don't have to look far to find other dev comments (housing never having auto-demolishing, FC housing being a separate system from private, etc.) that basically make it clear dev opinions and plans change over time.

If you want to keep shouting about how 'green DPS are bad' and other nonsense that's fine but the established conventions of this game make you look more and more like a crazy person on a street corner yelling about how 'the end is coming!' each day.

Hopefully one day you'll learn. Until then I will cherish these moments of letting you know how nonsensical all this is

[Lunaxia]

Nope, Yoshi-P said...

While there may be some who cling onto that statement as if their life depends on it, the fact of the matter is the FFXIV community does expect healers to DPS, and you will be immediately kicked from any PUG group or static the moment you try to argue otherwise. This is the standard that we have to accept, unless the devs raze healer DPS to the ground (which they won't.) "Green DPS", as you put it, are far from playing "poorly" - to juggle a decent damage output with optimum healing requires more skill than merely healing. You may believe they are playing incorrectly, but certainly not badly.

The developers can not make healer DPS more engaging...

Enmity is a group effort. If you are at the point where you're frequently threatening to steal enmity, you're likely overhealing and under-using SoS.

No one is arguing for combo healing spells; I think the lilies fiasco attests to that, but healer DPS is plainly here to stay and if the devs have no intention of changing it, enhancing that aspect to make it more interesting for healers is something worth considering.

I can't name a ...

If you want to play "within the design goals", then by all means do so. Don't DPS. Party with a tank who never leaves tank stance. Take a needless ten extra minutes to finish a dungeon. Stand around aimlessly waiting to land a spell you know won't be needed for at least another minute, if it makes yourself feel better. But don't blame the player base and act as if they're in the wrong when they find a more efficient and engaging way to use the tools handed to them because it isn't what you prefer.

There are players who want to play a healer

No, there are players who want to play their jobs well and aid their party to the best of their ability, and there are players who sit in the corner with their hands over their ears to the detriment of everyone else because this isn't what they ordered.

[MoroMurasaki]

No, there are players who want to play their jobs well and aid their party to the best of their ability, and there are players who sit in the corner with their hands over their ears to the detriment of everyone else because this isn't what they ordered.

While I may have had many mutually salty disagreements with you in the past I just wanted to say I thought this was well said. Good job! \o/

(Because it may be necessary I feel the need to explicitly state this is not sarcasm, it is a genuine compliment >.>)

[Lubu_Mykono]

Imagine if there was additional DPS options for all the healers [like 3 or 4] buttons.
That would leave Scholar with about 50 moves once you consider the cross role limit they are removing in 4.4. XD

[MoroMurasaki]

Imagine if there was additional DPS options for all the healers [like 3 or 4] buttons.
That would leave Scholar with about 50 moves once you consider the cross role limit they are removing in 4.4. XD

I love how they were all 'ohno button bloat!' at the beginning of SB and now rather than try to figure out a solution to cross role abilities they would rather just be like 'eh it's fine, take it all, figure out where to fit it on your hotbars' xD

[Brightamethyst]

Nope, Yoshi-P said they do not design content with healer DPS taken into account..

That is not a relevant statement. What SE plans and how the players actually play are not always the same.

It doesn't matter if fights aren't balanced around healer DPS. Damage is damage, no matter the source. Even if a fight is designed assuming no healer DPS at all, that just means healer DPS makes the fight that much faster and easier.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

There are players who want to play a healer, and there are players who want to Green DPS, they are not the same. Healers do not want their role to be Green DPS, and didn't sign up for a PUG to Green DPS, thus any insinuation from the party they should DPS more is trolling and will be always be seen as unwanted criticism.

Or it's seen as other players wanting the healer to contribute just as much to the party as everyone else. We have been over this countless times now. Healers can spend upwards of 80% casting DPS abilities simply because the healing requirements are so drastically low in this game. Even Savage allows for more DPSing than healing. Therefore, you are, frankly, a liability to the party if you aren't willing to DPS as those "green DPS" you dislike so much will do an equivalent job healing while adding what is essentially free damage for the raid. What you consider trolling, I consider common courtesy.