The Healer Double Standard

[Elgeron]

I think I clearly articulated what I thought was a double standard and instead of arguing against my positions, you post this tripe.

Everything you post across the various topics has no real value other than "No because reasons without actually listing anything".

I'll say don't bother with her, did the same in other topics, never addresing the arguments and twisting arguments to make value attacks instead of actually explaining or argumenting her points.


Now, one thing I see, which I think is related to the double standart issue, is that people seem to be misinterpreting the issue; Healers don't want to DPS. The issue with healers was never about doing DPS, the removal of the DPS skill themselves isn't the problem, because then, why is AST and WHM complaining too? Their DPS skill are just the same as before. No, the problem is that healer classes have been striped of half of their kit, while WHM hasn't gained any. With this I mean what they did when soloing or when there was downtime. Is not that Healers want to be "green DPS", is that DPS was the way we contribute to the party, how we excel at our jobs by both keeping the party alive while contributing as much as possible. In the AST case, it wasn't so much DPSing as it was buffing. WHM was considered by many the "entry" healer class because its heals were powerful, but lacked any extra mechanic to worry about. SCH was the one which had the most interesting DPS rotation, wich was still quite simple, yet it interacted with our healing skills (using ED to fill the Fairy gauge and dump Aetherflow to avoid wasting it while helping conserving MP). I think this twisting of what the healer issues are hurts the discussion quite a bit.

[Deceptus]

Now, one thing I see, which I think is related to the double standart issue, is that people seem to be misinterpreting the issue; Healers don't want to DPS. The issue with healers was never about doing DPS, the removal of the DPS skill themselves isn't the problem, because then, why is AST and WHM complaining too? Their DPS skill are just the same as before. No, the problem is that healer classes have been striped of half of their kit, while WHM hasn't gained any. With this I mean what they did when soloing or when there was downtime. Is not that Healers want to be "green DPS", is that DPS was the way we contribute to the party, how we excel at our jobs by both keeping the party alive while contributing as much as possible. In the AST case, it wasn't so much DPSing as it was buffing. WHM was considered by many the "entry" healer class because its heals were powerful, but lacked any extra mechanic to worry about. SCH was the one which had the most interesting DPS rotation, wich was still quite simple, yet it interacted with our healing skills (using ED to fill the Fairy gauge and dump Aetherflow to avoid wasting it while helping conserving MP). I think this twisting of what the healer issues hurts the discussion quite a bit.

DPS is the end all metric because there is no way to effectively gauge HPS other than everyone is alive and the encounter is done. In fact, overhealing is generally considered a bad thing because your GCD's would be better spent elsewhere. And the only other place to spend them as a healer is on DPS. If the developers gave us more mitigation that would be awesome.

Make Protect a short term defensive CD. Turn Apocatastasis into Shell, give it to the healers, and make it a magic defensive CD. Remove everyone's self heals so healers actually have something to do. Ramp up the enemy damage a bit (but not too much or casuals will scream).

One of the main reasons I made this thread was very simple:

If tanks had a 1-2 combo for massive enmity (from level 2 to level 80), an AOE, and nothing but Defensive CD's (not offensive CD's) they'd be rioting. This is the exact situation healers will find themselves in come shadowbringers.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

Now, one thing I see, which I think is related to the double standard issue, is that people seem to be misinterpreting the issue; Healers don't want to DPS.

One of my standout moments as a healer was 3.1, helping PUG's with Thordan EX. The dragoon jumps would come up, along with the double tank busters, and I would actually pop Presence of Mind not to DPS but to HEAL as people were slightly mis-positioned or not using enough cooldowns. Health bars would spike down and then immediately up in rapid succession as I precasted heals at a speed that could be backed by a Super Eurobeat soundtrack. It felt glorious.

Those moments are rare in FF14 though, and are most common when your compatriots are making errors (and just carrying people's misplays gets old after the glow of determining life and death wears out).

I DO want to DPS too though. I'd like support spells/buffs and debuffs too. I'd honestly like a lily system were Lily Heals build into Lily DPS tools (Quake, Tornado, Flood), which build into Afflatus Misery. Find where to heal so I can open up my nukes, which could even carry some type of raid support. I would NOT mind WHM being the BIG NUMBERS healer. Throw big heals, throw big rocks. Give us the minimum raid support needed and let AST and SCH be the subtle ones. It actually fits late-game WHM's class fantasy in older games, where Holy made WHM not unlike a wrathful god.

But Square Enix only seems to want to give me the healing tools, not give me the support ones, and is taking the DPS ones away piece by piece. In return, encounter design doesn't change to make those healing tools useful. As content is outgeared, more and more time is spent throwing a regen up and then mashing one button to fill time. Or worse, if healer damage is truly razed to the ground or MP can't support it, doing NOTHING while waiting between sparse heals.

This doesn't just apply to healer imo. I really, really want to see the crowd control tools on my Black Mage and Bard be more than incredibly niche optional play lines in old content.