Stop telling healers to go play dps

[Inuk9]

In the end the content will determine what healers should do. Right now we have more dps checks than heal checks. I hope in Shb we got encounters with a heavy healing check.

[Gemina]

I'm not personally invested heavily on whether healers become pure healing only or provide a trickle of dps, as long as there's no gaps that feel like you're left useless. That's the only thing I'm iffy about and it's just more "wait and see". It doesn't look wholly promising, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they might've changed encounters to compensate for the changes.

The gaps are to be filled with your offensive skills. There is no question about DPSing during downtime; that's not changing. The speculation is how big those gaps will be. The only healer that really has something to worry about is SCH, because about 2/3 of their current DPS kit is going away. They used more buttons than either WHM or AST on GCDs when applying pDPS, and now they are basically like the other two and will be spamming their filler spell during downtime in order to optimize.

This is where the record broken saying of 'we have to just try the content' actually does apply. Whether or not the content adjusts for greater healing requirements, SCHs are the healing job that are going to have to find out if they can adjust to a new identity.

[Gemina]

Think the general fear people have is SE is not going to make it so healing is that demanding and thus putting healers in the situation they are in now with far simpler dps tool kits. A happy medium is if they increased the amount of healing required while also expanding heir own damage potential.

As I said in my last post, this applies only to SCH. WHM and AST already are and have been in this situation for the longest time now. WHM lost Aero 3, but womp womp. It was a pretty animation that was more affective on bosses than on trash since your GCDs were better spent on Holy.

How do you increase both the healing requirement and expand their damage potential? Their damage potential is based on how much healing is required. Expanding their damage potential is the opposite direction the devs want to go, and that healers need to go. Perhaps I am reading into it wrong though and you mean more ways in which to cause damage, or basically bring WHM and AST up to where SCH is currently? Again though, these are not DPS jobs.

I don't think the fear has anything to do with the 'if' SE increases healing requirements. Players are worried about the direction the devs are clearly going with healers. If you are of the DPS mindset, and actually want healers to be able to do more damage, or have more ways to go about doing it, chances are pretty high that fear is justified.

[Eli85]

Sure. Just as soon as healers stop complaining about changes that they haven't even played yet.

[AikenDrum]

I don't think the fear has anything to do with the 'if' SE increases healing requirements.

Nope, i'm def worried they arent gonna increase healing requirements by considerable margin, since the fact that they were surprised people noticed it (quickly) does not suggest considerable changes. Unless they're gonna increase it gradually for 80 content? But that would also suggest none of the 1-70 content was changed.

I mean, a shift from dps/heal from 80/20 to something like 40/60 has a lot more impact on healer's gameplay than, say, removal of protect, yet second was mentioned in live letter, and all we have about first is one interview reply where they were surprised, really?

[Awha]

Snip...

That has always been my personal desire with healers that SE embrace the concept that FFXIV lends itself to a more aggressive playstyle and expand healers dps tool kits. The point I was trying to make is even if SE ups the required gcds on healing verse dps to 50/50 the point remains that the dps tool kit for healers is extremely basic while still fun to a degree.

Sure 6.0 healers end of the day will function as they do now with time and practice and that is the issue I have healers will still have downtime and dps will still be an expectation but instead of double downing on that reality and providing healers will more dps variety they appear to have gone down the expand the healing aspect. Which is important but I personal wish SE accepted the fact that healers have a more aggressive playstyle.

[Bahati]

I would rather every dungeon be scaled to give me a reason to do my job than have more healing tools than I will ever need and be forced to be a discount DPS. If I wanted to DPS, I'd have mained one.

[Callinon]

I would rather every dungeon be scaled to give me a reason to do my job than have more healing tools than I will ever need and be forced to be a discount DPS. If I wanted to DPS, I'd have mained one.

Er... not a fan of this. You should be able to outgear a dungeon. It's important to feel as though your character is growing more powerful as you advance.

[Gemina]

Which is important but I personal wish SE accepted the fact that healers have a more aggressive playstyle.

I think the day they truly accept that is the day they factor healer offense into DPS checks. Giving healers an even more diverse and unique kit in which to DPS encourages that aggressive playstyle. This playstyle also isn't favored by all healers, myself included.

One of the reasons why I prefer 24-man over all other content is because even though the fights are still scripted, I honestly have no idea who is going to dodge what, and I do have to use GCDs on healing and even reserve ogcd heals in some cases. Even with SCH who has the most diverse offensive kit, I actually feel more engaged into the fight when I have to actually heal it.

I'm bored when I have to DPS. It's better than standing around doing nothing, but it is hardly engaging to me. Sure we could give healers more interesting DPS kits, but I have to go back to the encouraging of a playstyle they seemingly want to go away. Of course, I can't speak for everyone but I know I am not alone with being a healer who wants more responsibility actually healing. I don't want 1-1-1-1 either, but also not a big fan of 1-2-3 on healers. I want more, "Heal that dude! he gonna die!"

[Darkpaw]

Personally id find it far more engaging to leave the simplified dps kits on the healers and then focus more on the support role with healers rather than physical ranged.

Adding buffs to the party or even turning scholar into a debuff oriented healer for it’s support could be really intriguing, but thats just my opinion