The Healer Double Standard

[EaMett]

For what it's worth the first echos I'm getting from E3 Titania normal is that the casuals will be very frustrated because of healing patterns. Apparently you have a lot going on at times with some decent damage bursts during mechanics. Same healers reporting this are saying that it still feels like you'll be dpsing roughly the same as you would in SB once you're used to the fight.
Confirms we will hate not having ED on SCH. Would just throw out sacred soil to use the stack (the one we have, not the one with the HoT) and says we will grow tired of not having ED to use stacks, real fast.

Seems like some of the raiders there were expecting the content to get nerfed. Considering only a few groups managed to clear on day one (4 I think?) compared to some 20+ last time they did this with Tsukiyomi, I wouldn't be surprised.

Also tanks asking for protect and asking if you even know healer when you tell them it was removed lol. Oh boy, DF gonna be fun

Edit: Oh and AST seems to be in a tight spot, people seem to want to play SCH/WHM which makes sense, not that different from SB early days really.

[Ardour]

Some thoughts on the DoT pruning (with the caveat that I'm just a casual player):

I think the argument that extra DoTs don't add any particularly complex decision making is missing the point. Decision making is only one of the skills required to succeed in this kind of game - attention management is also critical, and while I agree that managing 2 or 3 or even 4+ DoTs doesn't stress your decision making skills much more than 1 DoT, it certainly taxes your attention. "Keep DoTs refreshed" is a very simple concept on paper, but in practice even going from 2 DoTs to 1 (RIP Aero III) will noticeably reduce the number of situations where your attention is divided between multiple tasks. Since current healer rotations don't even come close to DPS jobs in terms of in-depth decision-making, they strongly rely on this attention tax to keep the player engaged, and I think even a slight reduction in workload could make the difference between SCH feeling like a tense balancing act and a tedious chore.

On a much more basic level, pressing a number of buttons just tends to feel more satisfying than mashing the same 1-2 buttons ad nauseam. There's a reason the game has combo chains that could have been compressed into a single button - 1-2-3 spam > 1-1-1 spam, even when it adds no actual difficulty. It's nice to see different animations and, well, to physically press different buttons. I know button bloat is an issue too, but if pruning is needed there must be some other abilities that they could target before going after the already small number of DPS abilities.

[Ilenya]

For what it's worth the first echos I'm getting from E3 Titania normal is that the casuals will be very frustrated because of healing patterns. Apparently you have a lot going on at times with some decent damage bursts during mechanics. Same healers reporting this are saying that it still feels like you'll be dpsing roughly the same as you would in SB once you're used to the fight.
Confirms we will hate not having ED on SCH. Would just throw out sacred soil to use the stack (the one we have, not the one with the HoT) and says we will grow tired of not having ED to use stacks, real fast.

Neat that Titania may actually be more healer intensive, but that's only one marker...It'd have been like judging all healing based on release Pharos Sirius, or the Odin Trial. The fact that we *still* seem to be potentially DPSing the same amount, however, is telling.

And no duh it will suck without ED. I'm just trying to imagine a proper timing rotation, and all I can think of ends up as "Guess the tank always has Excog on!" It's not a fun thought.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

I've seen the argument many times where tank dps priority comes from the fact that keeping enmity is so very easy, and yet optimized tank as of now requires actions by other roles for it to even work. The same applies for healer. In any case, the reason dps is being stripped or 'balanced' from the other roles is because it has literally become all that matters in terms of quantifiable skill. Not how well healers healed in less than ideal conditions or how a tank kept enmity despite the dps pouring out all they had but how much damage did you do? To be fair, the game itself has lent itself to mindset but this last expansion specifically it's gotten out of control when tanks die because healers are too invested in their dps to throw out a heal or tanks allow anyone who pulls aggro to keep it, regardless of circumstances, because dps stance best stance. Sorry bro.

Granted it really is a few bad eggs that ruin it for everyone but no one really bothered to try to educate otherwise becasue anyone who went against the almighty meta got visciously flayed. So sorry not sorry I guess? You reap what you sow.

[JWag12787]

You mean I can't keep my party alive AND beat up the bad guy anymore..?
*sniff sniff*
Doesn't that negatively affect me in PVE / MSQ by limiting my DPS output there as well..? Or are these restrictions solely in duties / groups?

[Deceptus]

I've seen the argument many times where tank dps priority comes from the fact that keeping enmity is so very easy, and yet optimized tank as of now requires actions by other roles for it to even work. The same applies for healer. In any case, the reason dps is being stripped or 'balanced' from the other roles is because it has literally become all that matters in terms of quantifiable skill. Not how well healers healed in less than ideal conditions or how a tank kept enmity despite the dps pouring out all they had but how much damage did you do? To be fair, the game itself has lent itself to mindset but this last expansion specifically it's gotten out of control when tanks die because healers are too invested in their dps to throw out a heal or tanks allow anyone who pulls aggro to keep it, regardless of circumstances, because dps stance best stance. Sorry bro.

Very few tanks die because of healer DPS. They die because the tanks pull more than they can handle. They die because they (tanks) don't rotate or even use their CD's enough. They die because the DPS don't kill the mobs fast enough and the healer runs out of mana.

Do some healers tunnel vision and tanks get lower than they would like? Yes. But death due to healer dps is extremely rare. That's what oh sh!t buttons like Benediction, Lustrate, Excog, and Essential Dignity are for.

That's what Hallowed Ground, Holmgang, and Living Dead are for.

[Ilenya]

Granted it really is a few bad eggs that ruin it for everyone but no one really bothered to try to educate otherwise becasue anyone who went against the almighty meta got visciously flayed. So sorry not sorry I guess? You reap what you sow.

What a stupid comment. Not all of us were in the "Follow this exact thing or else!" mindset, and I actively said *not* to follow the meta mindset unless you were actually comfortable with it, yet I'm getting hit with this all the same. The few bad eggs did ruin it, but tanks, for the most part, got changed where they didn't lose DPS in tank stance (At a loss of their DPS stance) while we got hit hard.

[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.

[Semirhage]

"Pure Healing" a la Cure spamming is a boring, unengaging design paradigm. D&D learned it decades ago. The cleric used to be either the person who drew the short straw or the rare person who just wanted to roleplay a priestly type. If your combat decision making process is something you could teach your dog to do, most people don't find it fun. This isn't to say that a simplistic healing model is a design flaw. It's a design decision. When you take a mandatory chore like healing or tanking and make its management low-stress, you can shore up the engagement elsewhere. Like, oh, random example off the top of my head, damage dealing. Or buffing! Or debuffing. Or battlefield control.

Healing in FF14 is of the trained dog variety. Spamming more outgoing damage on the party does very little to modify the decision tree, if anything at all. There are a lot of directions to go from here. Magic Missile and Cure Moderate Wounds until you lapse into a coma is not fun.

HeaLErS ShoULD HeaL onLy is from 1985. We've learned a lot since then.

[Kabooa]

HeaLErS ShoULD HeaL onLy is from 1985. We've learned a lot since then.

Why is hitting your damage button intrinsically more interesting than hitting your heal button?