The reason we healers DPS

[MsQi]

If you're not doing damage what are you doing during your down time?

[CazzT]

I mean with how non-threatening everything outside of Savage is, you have to have some -real- bad luck to be constantly healing. Try again.

Oh look, a red herring! Because I said nothing about needing to constantly heal.

[Reiryuu]

From what I've heard, this may have been a worry just from how things get translated, and yoshi uses "pure healing" to differentiate from shield healing (which he's apparently done before, prior to that liveletter). So instead of the statement being about shoving all healers into only healing, it was really just about homogenizing them in an effort to balance them more. But we'll have to wait till Shadowbringers to see for sure.

That's what I thought at first. But he uses it as an excuse for not giving the whm buffs like the others have or any sort of utility as well. That vision of a "pure healer" that he has has constantly been in the way of getting WHM anything other than more heals than it ever needs and regurgitated abilities that are taken away, given to everyone, and then shoved back in as a "new" ability somewhere down the road. No other class has had that done to them once, let alone twice like WHM.

[Urthdigger]

Oh look, a red herring! Because I said nothing about needing to constantly heal.

Well, if you're not healing, and you're not DPSing... what ARE you doing? Either your gear is awful so you need to constantly heal, you're DPSing, or you're just sitting around for the majority of the fight. That's just how it is in this game, even in hard content like Savage.

[Videra]

Oh look, a red herring! Because I said nothing about needing to constantly heal.

So if you're not constantly healing, and you're not keeping the GCD rolling? I can only surmise that you're watching Netflix.

Yes, a healer is AFK if they're not either constantly healing or DPSing. Or you might as well be. Is it so much to ask that you contribute the bare minimum effort of remembering your ABC rule?

[Reinha]

Oh tanks will still try to pull wall to wall, it'll just stress the healers out to no end leading to some massive burnout.

Healers are the only role that claims to be stressed when performing its primary task using all of its skills. I for one would welcome end game dungeons that are harder hitting than leveling dungeons, and tanks pulling wall to wall to challenge me further.

They’ll never bump it up to the level of ultimate content and even that is about 70% downtime.

70% of downtime in the hardest content is utterly ridiculous. Imagine the boss went away for 70% of the encounter and tanks and dps were just sitting there not able to perform their role. It sounds like healing potencies could be cut in half and people would still be able to meet the healing requirements.

[EaMett]

Healers are the only role that claims to be stressed when performing its primary task using all of its skills. I for one would welcome end game dungeons that are harder hitting than leveling dungeons, and tanks pulling wall to wall to challenge me further.



70% of downtime in the hardest content is utterly ridiculous. Imagine the boss went away for 70% of the encounter and tanks and dps were just sitting there not able to perform their role. It sounds like healing potencies could be cut in half and people would still be able to meet the healing requirements.

Yes and no.

Yes they could cut the healing potencies in half and we could still clear all the content in game. All the current content including ultimate can be solo healed after all. And dungeons can be speed run without a healer at all.

No they can’t cut the healing potencies in half because they would alienate a lot of players. There are a lot of people that currently struggle or are challenged by healing the content. Because of the way the game is set up this could be anyone from players who don’t main healer to beginners who never played mmos, or console players who find healing on controller challenging.

The changes for 5.0 cater to the later group of people but completely reduce the skill ceiling and flow on some of the healers (sch hit the worse) and therefore really sap the fun out of the role for the former.

[Reinha]

There are a lot of people that currently struggle or are challenged by healing the content. Because of the way the game is set up this could be anyone from players who don’t main healer to beginners who never played mmos, or console players who find healing on controller challenging.

Are you actually suggesting that players who struggle to meet the healing requirements amount to a lot? With this amount of downtime? The main complaints I've seen are about healers not doing dps during downtime and having so much downtime to begin with.

If requiring people to cast more healing spells would alienate a lot of them then why do we ask healers to cast dps spells? It doesn't add up. This "Schrödinger's" downtime both exists when people debate healer dps and doesn't exist when people suggest that we should have reasons to heal more.

[EaMett]

Are you actually suggesting that players who struggle to meet the healing requirements amount to a lot? With this amount of downtime? The main complaints I've seen are about healers not doing dps during downtime and having so much downtime to begin with.

If requiring people to cast more healing spells would alienate a lot of them then why do we ask healers to cast dps spells? It doesn't add up. This This "Schrödinger's" downtime both exists when people debate healer dps and doesn't exist when people suggest that we should have reasons to heal more.

Because dps spells are optional and can be cast when the healer is comfortable with the healing portion of the fight. Some people just aren’t comfortable.

You know how sometimes you die and then get raised and suddenly you’re completely off the mark and confused and just fall victim to some other mechanic? Or if you’re a healer, suddenly something unexpected happens and you focus so hard on healing someone/raising that you tunnel vision and fail a mechanic?
You aren’t doing much during your downtime in those moments. But it’s not like you’re just sitting there idle. Your brain is trying to catch up.

You’d be surprised how many people feel overwhelmed in a similar fashion just all throughout their downtime. It can be for several reasons, maybe they forgot where the skill binding was, or aren’t used to healing, or take a lot of time to target, or have to see full hp bars to breath. Basically they simply never get comfortable enough to push dps.

It’s usually a combination of the above where downtime will be spent overhealing, selecting targets, mentally prepping for a mechanic, etc.. the number of times I’ve had to outright tell my pug co healer in o11s to stop healing during the first phase because my fairy can literally do everything by herself is frightening. And even then they’re sometimes still worried and can’t help throwing a heal out because omg people are at 40% hp or they’re so hung up on not dying to mechanics that they’re so focused on boss cast bars and placement that they don’t cast any dps spells (or very few). They aren’t dpsing, but hey aren’t AFK either.

SE has made it a point to be inclusive of all player levels and that’s a great thing. It just means that combined to choreographed encounters, healing downtime will always be a thing.

[Reiryuu]

You’d be surprised how many people feel overwhelmed in a similar fashion just all throughout their downtime. It can be for several reasons, maybe they forgot where the skill binding was, or aren’t used to healing, or take a lot of time to target, or have to see full hp bars to breath. Basically they simply never get comfortable enough to push dps.

All right, but should everyone else be punished because they can't handle it, or should there be more training opportunities for those who are slow and uncomfortable? Are you going to hold the entire class back when many understand the material to an adequate degree or are you going to give those that need help some extra help outside of class, perhaps give them a few extra practice assignments to help gain confidence? If SE really wants something like that to happen, why not differentiate the healers to appease multiple playstyles instead of dumb all of them down to fit one particular playstyle? Hell, why not do that with WHM/Conj? Take out the WHM stone, you get a heal-only version of the WHM. Pop the stone back in, you get access to all the more complicated stuff. Conj can already equip all the healing gear anyway.