The reason we healers DPS

[Connor]

I don’t mind the changes at all personally, but with the amount of backlash from these changes I’d be surprised if they aren’t already currently retooling all healer’s to be purely oGCD-healing based.

Also (personal opinion) but if you’re so opposed to the idea of just having to heal as a healer instead of maximising personal DPS outputs and minimising healing output, maybe playing another role is an option. Not saying everyone should be Sylphie but do healers really need long complex DPS rotations? Does it really matter in the end how many total DPS buttons a healer has? I get that DPS is currently used to fill healing down time, but is that really the only possible way to fill that downtime?

Lastly, I think a lot of us on both sides of the argument need to accept that the developers are the ones with the final say on the game. They could turn around tomorrow and announce that they’ve removed the healer role entirely and rename it ‘support’ to emphasise its DPS-oriented role requirements. They could just as easily announce the complete removal of all healer DPS abilities and make them use trusts or whatever solo. It wouldn’t go down well, but honestly doubt it’d affect subs enough to make them notice anyway

[Mhiro]

I don’t mind the changes at all personally, but with the amount of backlash from these changes I’d be surprised if they aren’t already currently retooling all healer’s to be purely oGCD-healing based.

Also (personal opinion) but if you’re so opposed to the idea of just having to heal as a healer instead of maximising personal DPS outputs and minimising healing output, maybe playing another role is an option. Not saying everyone should be Sylphie but do healers really need long complex DPS rotations? Does it really matter in the end how many total DPS buttons a healer has? I get that DPS is currently used to fill healing down time, but is that really the only possible way to fill that downtime?

Lastly, I think a lot of us on both sides of the argument need to accept that the developers are the ones with the final say on the game. They could turn around tomorrow and announce that they’ve removed the healer role entirely and rename it ‘support’ to emphasise its DPS-oriented role requirements. They could just as easily announce the complete removal of all healer DPS abilities and make them use trusts or whatever solo. It wouldn’t go down well, but honestly doubt it’d affect subs enough to make them notice anyway

This pretty much. They wrote the book. We're just the readers.

[Urthdigger]

I don’t mind the changes at all personally, but with the amount of backlash from these changes I’d be surprised if they aren’t already currently retooling all healer’s to be purely oGCD-healing based.

Also (personal opinion) but if you’re so opposed to the idea of just having to heal as a healer instead of maximising personal DPS outputs and minimising healing output, maybe playing another role is an option. Not saying everyone should be Sylphie but do healers really need long complex DPS rotations? Does it really matter in the end how many total DPS buttons a healer has? I get that DPS is currently used to fill healing down time, but is that really the only possible way to fill that downtime?

Lastly, I think a lot of us on both sides of the argument need to accept that the developers are the ones with the final say on the game. They could turn around tomorrow and announce that they’ve removed the healer role entirely and rename it ‘support’ to emphasise its DPS-oriented role requirements. They could just as easily announce the complete removal of all healer DPS abilities and make them use trusts or whatever solo. It wouldn’t go down well, but honestly doubt it’d affect subs enough to make them notice anyway

Except I'm not opposed to healing on healer? As I stated in my initial post, healing *IS* my first priority. It's not about minimizing healing output, but minimizing GCDs. That means using my heals effectively (Making use of buffs, using more powerful heals or AoE when necessary) and using my oGCD abilities to patch people up in as short a time as possible. I'm trying to be the best healer I can be, which means patching up people really fast, which means having tons of downtime where I may as well deal damage.

At the moment, DPS really is the only effective way to fill downtime. And if they removed all the healer DPS abilities, it would be quite boring unless they retooled how healing and encounters work entirely. And I wouldn't mind if that happened. So long as I'm helping the party I'm happy.

[Brightamethyst]

I get that DPS is currently used to fill healing down time, but is that really the only possible way to fill that downtime?

Yes.

Oh sure, the devs could create other options and other possibilities but the odds of that happening, especially in the short term, are practically zero. They'd have to redesign every dungeon, fight, and all three healers practically from the ground up to make it happen.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more support options and a move towards DPS not being the default downtime activity. I just don't see it ever happening given the current game design.