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

[Anger]

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 =(



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.

Your argument is valid on old content but we don't know how ShB content will be. Everything is pointing toward it requiring a greater deal of healing based on the way jobs are being designed.

[Urthdigger]

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 =\

It's not that we don't WANT to heal more, it's that we CAN'T. There's only so much damage that comes out from the boss. Once that's healed, there's no point in healing more. It's like if a DPS were to keep spamming weaponskills on a boss that has gone invulnerable, you'd consider that poor play right? So why ask us to spam heals on people who aren't missing HP?

We don't even mind if content becomes more difficult to require more healing, but there's a problem there: Make it too hard, and casual players will be unable to proceed. You would need to make every fight essentially savage-tier difficulty to get that. There's also the fact of increasing gear: As both the tank and healer get more stats, we require less heals to top people off, creating more downtime. The only way around that would be to have strict ilvl requirements, where the ilvl requirement and cap were the same. But then, that creates little incentive to go after high end gear if the extra stats won't actually do anything.

Your argument is valid on old content but we don't know how ShB content will be. Everything is pointing toward it requiring a greater deal of healing based on the way jobs are being designed.

What evidence is there of this? I've heard folks trying the Titania fight had to do about as much healing as they're used to.

[Ilenya]

What evidence is there of this? I've heard folks trying the Titania fight had to do about as much healing as they're used to.

Remember, according to some we should ignore that because it's not level 80 Extreme fights. Which, naturally, will shift to "It's not Savage!"

[PondHollow]

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

I wouldn't mind; I do play games where that is a thing, and it's enjoyable when it's needed. But you would really need to be playing a different game altogether. In Final Fantasy XIV you can heal an expert roulette without a single gcd, perhaps with an effective optimum spending maybe 10% of gcds on heals if you're mediocre like me.

Almost every heal not essential to keeping everyone above 0 HP for the duration of the instance is just prolonging the fight and throwing away resources.

It would be nice if Shadowbringers had a lot more damage going out. It would also be unplayable for a lot of people, and a surprise inconsistent with the game's history.

[Sebazy]

Everything is pointing toward it requiring a greater deal of healing based on the way jobs are being designed.

This is patently false.

The dungeon shown in the preview is about on par with the early Heavensward dungeons.

Yoshida himself has stated that they are aiming to have Savage be around the difficulty level of Creator. Creator is widely acknowledged as the easiest Savage tier ever.

Don't get me wrong. The levelling dungeons will most likely be a big shock to the system for those that aren't expecting it. But this isn't because of a change in heart from SE. It's just that we won't be overgearing the content like we have for expert roulettes. Heavensward was exactly the same, as was SB once you hit Bardams and beyond.

I see 5.0 looking like early 3.0 at best, which honestly wouldn't be a bad thing tbh.

[SilentVoice]

It's not that we don't WANT to heal more, it's that we CAN'T. There's only so much damage that comes out from the boss. Once that's healed, there's no point in healing more. It's like if a DPS were to keep spamming weaponskills on a boss that has gone invulnerable, you'd consider that poor play right? So why ask us to spam heals on people who aren't missing HP?

We don't even mind if content becomes more difficult to require more healing, but there's a problem there: Make it too hard, and casual players will be unable to proceed. You would need to make every fight essentially savage-tier difficulty to get that. There's also the fact of increasing gear: As both the tank and healer get more stats, we require less heals to top people off, creating more downtime. The only way around that would be to have strict ilvl requirements, where the ilvl requirement and cap were the same. But then, that creates little incentive to go after high end gear if the extra stats won't actually do anything.

This is why i am thinking making some healer specific mechanics would probably, at least partially, solve the problem. Shinryu Dragonhead is a good prototype of what can make healers busy healing, at least for non casual content

[Alathon]

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

As best I can discern there was already a consensus in favor of the "healer" classes being combatants and damage dealers, just like "tanks". A minority of Sylphies complained vocally and for whatever reason it appears they will get their way.

What should have been done, and hopefully will be, is for SE to pick one of the Healer classes and designate them the "pure support" class. Give them basic DPS tools for solo content and proper DPS rotations on the other two, like Scholar used to have. Fill out the support healer with a good buff rotation (spells appropriate to lore) that is equivalent to the other two healers rotation DPS. This way, players who genuinely want to avoid doing DPS for whatever reason can have a Healer class that gives them what they want, and everyone else can get what they want as well.

[althenawhm]

Give them basic DPS tools for solo content and proper DPS rotations on the other two, like Scholar used to have. Fill out the support healer with a good buff rotatio

We sorta had that though, AST had the simple DPS rotation, with the cards providing strong buffs. SCH had something of a DPS rotation, and WHM is apparently meant to be the personal DPS healer out of the bunch even though it never panned out that way.

[SilentVoice]

As best I can discern there was already a consensus in favor of the "healer" classes being combatants and damage dealers, just like "tanks". A minority of Sylphies complained vocally and for whatever reason it appears they will get their way.

What should have been done, and hopefully will be, is for SE to pick one of the Healer classes and designate them the "pure support" class. Give them basic DPS tools for solo content and proper DPS rotations on the other two, like Scholar used to have. Fill out the support healer with a good buff rotation (spells appropriate to lore) that is equivalent to the other two healers rotation DPS. This way, players who genuinely want to avoid doing DPS for whatever reason can have a Healer class that gives them what they want, and everyone else can get what they want as well.

while i admit that would also partially solve the problem, i think it would create holywars in parts of pDPS and rDPS. it would be very hard to balance, making a full support healer raid utility go in par with personal DPS toolkit of the "offensive" healer. i mean, look how bad it worked with SAM and BLM, who have incredible personal DPS, but they are unwanted due to no raid utility.
considering that, i think to start with, content needs to be filled with healer mechanics. it won't require turning the balance of the game upside down, while still making healers do what they technically supposed to - heal. not 90% of time of course, but this will at least mitigate current "holywars", with people complaining how that "bad healer" dared to use Adlo to mitigate a tankbuster, which can be survived without mitigation from healer side.

[SilentVoice]

We sorta had that though, AST had the simple DPS rotation, with the cards providing strong buffs. SCH had something of a DPS rotation, and WHM is apparently meant to be the personal DPS healer out of the bunch even though it never panned out that way.

except all three healers are kind of boring on DPS side. AST being the worse. rotation you say? is Malefic spam and refreshing Combust could be considered a rotation? =D and Lord of the Crown - i dunno what kind of troll thought such concept for an ability could've been good.
and all that would've been ok, except you have to spam Malefic and Combust like 80-90% of uptime. it is literally a memes material