I thought Yoshi wants healer to focus on healing only..

[AnimaAnimus]

If they fixed the buff/debuff system it wouldn't be as much of an issue. In xi as a healer you would heal plus contribute via spells like dia, slow, para, blind, haste, refresh, bar-, etc etc etc rather than dps and it was great. You felt more your role.

But in this game we are missing the crucial elements of buffing and debuffing, which they removed due to it being too complicated of a battle system for...well...ppl who don't wanna take the time to hit a single dps button on top of healing much less have to deal with 10 buffs and debuffs on top of healing.

Battle is basically dodging and dps without buff and debuff elements and you can really feel that its gone. Just like the elemental wheel. "it's too complicated" is a poor excuse because its really not even if you are the type of player who puts just slightly more in than minimal effort. I hate how they bring the games down to the minimum level of competency rather than trying to lift the players up to a higher level.

[Magnedeus]

They could always just remove healer offensive spells to tell healers "hey we want you heal and only heal understand?"

Players: "but what about solo quests? We can't heal our enemies to death!"

SE: "That's why we gave you chocobos"

[Liam_Harper]

The challenge I think devs are facing here is that they want healer damage as an option, but not a requirement. The problem is that players make it a requirement to compensate for how bad their DPS is.

Not true.

Using the website that shall not be named on encounters on EX and above at minimum ilv, if you took the required raid dps and removed healers from the equation, the dps would all have to be playing at 95th to over 100th percentile. We're talking better than padded world first players. This often isn't realistically possible and is far more than intended for EX.

Whatever Yoshi intends, his design team have accounted for healers doing some damage.

[SweetPete]

The challenge I think devs are facing here is that they want healer damage as an option, but not a requirement. The problem is that players make it a requirement to compensate for how bad their DPS is.

Exactly! Say it again. Say it louder! I was in this inno group earlier and I thought it went well. There were a few deaths but that was because mechanics. Anyway. We defeat inno and leave the instance. Was waiting for re-que, about 3 minutes then I was kicked lol. I mean I wasn’t upset about it but I was on my Astro in nocturnal. I wondered what could it have been? My co-healer was whm. I was basically healing full time with the occasional whm afflatus here and there. Which is fine. I drew cards on CD. Whm never put regen on the tank so I was using intersection on CD as well as shielding the tank often. Dps when I could. Maybe they thought I wasn’t doing enough dps lol. I wasn’t mad but found it funny. I never stopped pressing buttons. And no I wasn’t spamming benefíc on the full hp tank and overhealing. I mean it is what it is. Just sucks they didn’t even give me an explanation why. But there goes the life of a healer nowadays. Since 1.0 I’ve been playing. This is the second time I’ve ever been kicked from a group. The first time was just because they wanted to invite their fc healer which was cool. I didn’t mind not care. This time I just don’t know why haha.

[Hezzlocks]

My focus on healing was literally until I got used to the job again. Then it's been back to DPSing constantly. YoshiP may want it, but it'll take more than healer changes for it to happen.

Exactly this. Healers in FF14 are already built in a way that makes healing be the primary focus completely possible. They have been for a long time now. Its the fights that don't support this, what with most damage being completely avoidable, and the unavoidable damage coming in slow and predictable bursts. Incoming damage needs to be way higher and far more unpredictable to make healers focus on healing. In addition to this, SE only seems to know how to make DPS check wipe conditions, so every fight is a tight DPS race that further promotes healers and tanks forsaking healing and mitigation (via melding and gearing) for more dps.

The attitude people have doesn't help, either. Plenty of people seem to believe that a focus on healing, or being a "pure" healer, means no dps spells. This is completely wrong. When healing is the focus, doing damage becomes a reward, not a necessity. You're doing really good managing your MP and cooldown usage, and keeping everyone healthy? You get to throw a few dps spells in. Thd primary challenge is still in the healing, but then you get to feel good when you've done so well that you have time to throw a few rocks out, rather than feel like its expected of you to.

And to top it all off, since it's only the fight design that needs to change in order to create a focus on healing, that means you now have a variety of playstyles from fight to fight! One fight is a hectic high damage fight that relies upon your ability to manage your cooldowns and MP to keep everyone alive, the next fight is a more traditional fight with predictable damage and a dps check, making your damage contribution much more important. No one says it has to explicitly be one style or the other - the two styles of play can coexist and complement each other, you know?

[SweetPete]

[QUOTE=Connor;5120846]I don’t really get why they don’t just flat out say what they actually want healers to ‘do’ or ‘don’t do’. It’s undeniable that DPS is a huge part of the healer role by design, so why they don’t just come and say ‘healers should be dealing damage’.

Connor I agree. Basically look at Astro. It struggled because of the nerfs to their healing toolkit. Of course people complained and wanted buff which we got. You’re right our ogcds are so strong you really don’t need to use gcd heals. If they came out and said healers are suppose to deal damage too. They would lose allot of players in that role because although there are many who love the 90% dps and 10% healing. There are also many who only like to heal and rarely use their damage skills outside of msq solo quest. I don’t judge either side of it. Neither side has a strong enough argument to the other. Yoshi P has stated that healers aren’t required to dps. However the community says healers need to dps because why just sit there? Should always be casting something. Tanks don’t get a break, dps don’t get one either. They always pressing buttons so why should healers get special treatment? If they want healers to heal more they need to nerf all healers healing potency. Make us work for it. Honestly before Astro heals were buffed I enjoyed it. Weaker heals made it fun again. I was actually working hard to keep my tank alive during wall to wall pulls. I could barely dps because the tank was dropping massively every second. Literally spam healing. Just the adrenaline of not knowing if the heal will be enough. I liked that. Now it’s back to being powerful lol. I say nerf the healing potency across the board for each healer and increase the mp for damage spells. Bring back that decision making that made it fun. I know people might say that won’t fix anything but I believe if Yoshi P wants healers to heal more nerf the healing potency since they obviously are to scared to massively increase the damage taken. Just my opinion. No bully please

[Delily]

If they fixed the buff/debuff system it wouldn't be as much of an issue. In xi as a healer you would heal plus contribute via spells like dia, slow, para, blind, haste, refresh, bar-, etc etc etc rather than dps and it was great. You felt more your role.

But in this game we are missing the crucial elements of buffing and debuffing, which they removed due to it being too complicated of a battle system for...well...ppl who don't wanna take the time to hit a single dps button on top of healing much less have to deal with 10 buffs and debuffs on top of healing.

Battle is basically dodging and dps without buff and debuff elements and you can really feel that its gone. Just like the elemental wheel. "it's too complicated" is a poor excuse because its really not even if you are the type of player who puts just slightly more in than minimal effort. I hate how they bring the games down to the minimum level of competency rather than trying to lift the players up to a higher level.

It’s not a matter of complicated versus simple but a matter of usefulness. In XI people required red mages, bards, and geomancers to be around. In fact end game fights are balanced around a geomancer being present. The fights don’t need those jobs but people aren’t going to waste time if they don’t have to and make the fights more challenging, they’re simple going to bring those jobs. If fights truly don’t need them people will fill the slot with a DPS. The jobs are either required or no one will bring them.

[Miziliti]

But in this game we are missing the crucial elements of buffing and debuffing, which they removed due to it being too complicated of a battle system for...well...ppl who don't wanna take the time to hit a single dps button on top of healing much less have to deal with 10 buffs and debuffs on top of healing.

Buff/debuff gameplay can absolutely stay in FFXIV. The problem in the past is that the majority of buff/debuff applications were on DPS roles. NIN/DRG/SAM had resistance debuffs and BRD had party buffs/foe. Other than it made party composition imbalance and some of them jobs get favored. Being a debuffer while playing DPS role is very annoying to me.

Healer role never had other things to do until AST's buffs came into play. Apparently, buff was too overpowered and got nerf'd into ground as of now. They could easily shift buff/debuff responsibility to healers, but nah they choose to almost eliminate all of them.

On top that, DNC was born and got all that buff abilities... on DPS role. Addle, the debuff ability, is still on caster DPS only. DPS, a role that require a set rotation to play, who's job is to kill stuff for party ASAP, is given these support utilities while healers..............just heal when party take damage.

Now we are in 5.0, yet healer STILL got nothing to do other than throwing damage spell besides healing.

Healer role could specialize in all kinds of buff/debuff supportive gameplay other than support your party's health bar so that they don't die.

They can make it so that healer's dps won't matter that much, but they gotta give healers something else to do. If healing more is the solution, I don't know how well that can go.

[Selova]

The vision of healers being pure healers was and is never going to be a reality. If they wanted healers just healing or even healing for the majority of a encounter they would have to make massive changes on how they design fights.


Every boss would have to auto the tanks with the chance of the autos being a critical hit, they would have to have phases of heavy, consistent pulsing damage and less predetermined scripted damage where all damage done is reactionary.



Healers are still required to push their damage doing savage at minimum ilvl. If you just had your healers casting nothing but heals you would wipe to enrage every single time.


Redesigning how the game functions is a pretty monumental undertaking and I'm sure both the devs on the player base would rather they work on new content rather then dumping resources and time reworking how the game has always functioned. Healers will always be expected r to push damage.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

And to top it all off, since it's only the fight design that needs to change in order to create a focus on healing, that means you now have a variety of playstyles from fight to fight! One fight is a hectic high damage fight that relies upon your ability to manage your cooldowns and MP to keep everyone alive, the next fight is a more traditional fight with predictable damage and a dps check, making your damage contribution much more important. No one says it has to explicitly be one style or the other - the two styles of play can coexist and complement each other, you know?

I think this is most important. I like FF14 because I can contribute to DPS, but it'd be nice once in awhile to get a fight that focuses healing throughput. Or that asks people to use Crowd Control outside of stun/interrupt.

More variance in encounter design on a level dealing directly with toolkits, rather than positioning and coordination mechanics that operate independently, would greatly alleviate the stale feeling that has crept into this game's development loop.