Wedging healers into a pure healing role may have some advantages.

[Anger]

A lot of healers tend to avoid using their full kit. People in the group or raid might be dead or dying while the healers cool downs aren't being fully utilized; lustrate, benediction, tetragammaton.

Perhaps focusing on DPSing too much has caused issue with utilizing the full toolkit due to focus being divided too much. It's possible, even plausible, that this is why Square Enix decided to remove some of the healer DPS abilities and focus the healers on doing their real job.

[althenawhm]

The only reason people can DPS so much is skills like lustrate and tetra, so I have no idea what you are talking about.

[SilentVoice]

basically there should've been nothing wrong with healers being able to DPS, the problem is though, that DPS uptime available through design on most battles makes it "you either DPS and i am watching your logs, or you are bad healer, because you use GCD heals"
i mean, i started my MMORPG "career" since Lineage C3 got released. back then healers couldn't DPS at all. it was only thanks the possibility to wield any weapon healer classes had at least some chance to solo things. back then, healers abilities to DPS were wanted simply due to that.
But whatever the case, many people seem to enjoy healers as who have 80% uptime for DPS and come with various arguments why its better. I think we need a consensus. battle should be designed for at least 50\50 heal\dps ratio, then maybe everyone gets what they want

[Anger]

basically there should've been nothing wrong with healers being able to DPS, the problem is though, that DPS uptime available through design on most battles makes it "you either DPS and i am watching your logs, or you are bad healer, because you use GCD heals"
i mean, i started my MMORPG "career" since Lineage C3 got released. back then healers couldn't DPS at all. it was only thanks the possibility to wield any weapon healer classes had at least some chance to solo things. back then, healers abilities to DPS were wanted simply due to that.
But whatever the case, many people seem to enjoy healers as who have 80% uptime for DPS and come with various arguments why its better. I think we need a consensus. battle should be designed for at least 50\50 heal\dps ratio, then maybe everyone gets what they want

I think that when you choose a healing role that should be 75% - 90% of what you're doing. There are DPS jobs that have heals or have healing buffs like mantra. But they don't get to heal the entire raid for prolonged periods of time. Physick is incredibly weak. If the DPS could heal just as strong as a healer in some cases I could see this being fair. But why should a healer do healing and moderately high DPS while a DPS can only really DPS and provide basic/mediocre heals.

[althenawhm]

I think that when you choose a healing role that should be 75% - 90% of what you're doing.

Well I think it should be right about where its at right now, which is why I play the role.

[Jaelommiss]

The entire purpose of healer dps is to maximize output during time that would otherwise be wasted. Healers who do not use their full kits rarely have any interest in maximizing their output. Increasing healing loads to reduce downtime will not cause them to use their tools more effectively because they have little to no interest in doing so. If it reaches the point that they cannot clear content by using their basic tools they are far more likely to complain on the forums than try to improve themselves.

That is not true for everyone, of course. Some underperforming healers will take the opportunity to improve. However, the behaviour I have observed previously in these healers suggests that improvement will not occur in more than a slender minority.


Edit: I wouldn't mind needing to spend more time healing. I want to be engaged in the fight 100% of the time. I'm not bothered whether that is healing, dps, or a mix of the two.

[Anger]

The entire purpose of healer dps is to maximize output during time that would otherwise be wasted. Healers who do not use their full kits rarely have any interest in maximizing their output. Increasing healing loads to reduce downtime will not cause them to use their tools more effectively because they have little to no interest in doing so. If it reaches the point that they cannot clear content by using their basic tools they are far more likely to complain on the forums than try to improve themselves.

That is not true for everyone, of course. Some underperforming healers will take the opportunity to improve. However, the behaviour I have observed previously in these healers suggests that improvement will not occur in more than a slender minority.

Well, if the content does become more difficult to heal; as many suspect, they won't really have a choice but to improve or the raid/party will not succeed.

[Urthdigger]

It's DPSing that requires you to use your whole kit. If you don't DPS, once you do enough healing to match incoming damage there is LITERALLY no reason to improve efficiency by better utilizing your toolkit. But when DPSing you need to make room to do so, and this means utilizing your kit for oGCD heals and ensuring your GCD heals get the most bang for their buck.

[SilentVoice]

I think that when you choose a healing role that should be 75% - 90% of what you're doing. There are DPS jobs that have heals or have healing buffs like mantra. But they don't get to heal the entire raid for prolonged periods of time. Physick is incredibly weak. If the DPS could heal just as strong as a healer in some cases I could see this being fair. But why should a healer do healing and moderately high DPS while a DPS can only really DPS and provide basic/mediocre heals.

i don't know why it is the way it is, and i also wanna heal more than i have to right now, but as you see what commentators above and below say - they simply don't want to.. so, maybe the only way to make everyone happy is 50\50 after all =\

[Sebazy]

A lot of healers tend to avoid using their full kit. People in the group or raid might be dead or dying while the healers cool downs aren't being fully utilized; lustrate, benediction, tetragammaton.

Perhaps focusing on DPSing too much has caused issue with utilizing the full toolkit due to focus being divided too much. It's possible, even plausible, that this is why Square Enix decided to remove some of the healer DPS abilities and focus the healers on doing their real job.

Just nope

The best O9S WHM DPS run pre echo

My solo heal of O9S, again pre echo

Despite the fact that Youmadesca's kill was a minute and a half quicker than mine, he got the same number of Assizes in whilst also getting significantly better value out of his full kit than I did.

It's not a case of focusing on DPS that prevents a healer from getting value out of their oGCDs and cooldowns. Rather, that simply comes with better standards of play as I hope my links demonstrate. I can link countless healers with sub 50% active rates in 24 man that literally do nothing outside of cast Medicas Its and Cures if you'd like me to further demonstrate my point =(

I think that when you choose a healing role that should be 75% - 90% of what you're doing. There are DPS jobs that have heals or have healing buffs like mantra. But they don't get to heal the entire raid for prolonged periods of time.

The problem with this view is that the game fundamentally wouldn't support a pure healing role for a multitude of reasons.

1) Casual content just doesn't require that much healing, it never has and it probably never will. Yoshida has demonstrated time and time again that he isn't willing to put pressure or responsibilities on healers. From ARR onwards we've only ever really lost facets of our gameplay with debuff rotations, buffs and dps complexity only ever being eroded.

2) Hardcore content doesn't require all that more healing either TBH. Yoshida's comments about leaning Savage more towards Creator difficulty (The easiest Savage tier yet) has me inclined to think this isn't going to change much either.

3) By gradually eroding healers side roles such as Virus chains. Our gameplay has pretty much turned into two sides of a coin. We can either be healing, we can be DPSing or we can stand there twiddling our thumbs. There is little else we can offer to our parties as things now stand.

These changes are absolutely not wedging us into a pure healing role. It will take sweeping changes to our toolkit as well as a big rethink on encounter design. Rather, they are simply diluting and simplifying a large chunk of our gameplay options.