What the term "healer" means to me

[Semirhage]

I have the opposite experience. In most RPGs, especially single player games, I've played healers that were powerful damage dealers in their own right, merely sacrificing access to the upper tiers of damage in exchange for the ability to help the team survive. I've played Final Fantasy games where the white mages could blast nearly as well as the black mages. MMOs where healers could tear through open world mobs but slowed down in dungeons to keep the party up. Never dealing as much damage as a class more dedicated to their damage output, mind you, but this "pure healer fantasy" with shrinking violet toolkits and constantly mashing healing spells is something I've only very rarely encountered in the world of games, video, tabletop, single player, multiplayer, or otherwise.

[Xiaoki]

Haha meters destroyer WoW. Well I shouldn’t say destroyed. It’s a tool that some wow players love and others hate just like ffxiv. I just couldn’t believe it happened. I talked to many people and they all saying if healers aren’t dps enough they will kick them. I mean it’s sorta ridiculous. So what, do I just leave people dead? do I only heal the tank when they are at 5% hp? Should I not draw and give out cards? So I basically just ignore most of my kit and only focus on dps and only heal my team when they have critical hp left? Just to stay in the group? Yeah I don’t think so. I know that elitist community is very small and it’s just unfortunate I encountered them.

I find it hilarious that people complain about how "toxic" and "elitist" the WoW community is but the FF14 community is far worse. I play both games and in WoW no one cares about healer DPS(or tank DPS) at all. You'll definitely get yelled at if you leave people at half health or below for extended periods of time though.

I guess time and popularity has made people forget that Square Enix is only tolerating the presence of damage meters so long they are not used to harass others. If someone complains about my DPS as a healer I will be reporting them.

[Connor]

I've played Final Fantasy games where the white mages could blast nearly as well as the black mages.

Which ones? From memory in FFI White Mages only have Holy, in III they only have Aero/Stone(plus Tornado and Quake)/Holy. In V there aren’t any offensive white Mage spells because you can just set black magic. Garnet and Eiko had offensive options through summons and Holy, but that’s because they’re healers and summoners squished together (it would be a bit weird if Ifrit and Shiva healers the party lol. I’m not massively experienced with XI but from what I understand healers there are more focused on buffing/debuffing and healing than offense, particularly for White Mages , and Scholars too were often called on for healing and support (though they can also access offense with Dark Arts).

Not saying that any of this somehow contradicts what you’re saying, just why my own thoughts on the matter differed from your own. And I mean, it would be more weird if everyone perceived things the exact same way. I think the fact that everyone has such different views on what a ‘healer’ is suggest that developers should maybe try and accommodate more than one playstyle for the role. I said that coming into something expecting one thing just to be handed another can feel jarring, but that applies to players who see healers as being more involved and offense-oriented too. Like, if they made all healers full-on ‘only healing’, they’d be ignoring a large part of the playerbase. Conversely though, if they did the same but with DPS and gave healers full-on DPS rotations, they’re still ignoring a large part of the playerbase that would like a more passive/supportive role. People who want a more offensive oriented healer playstyle aren’t happy with current healers, but players who want a more supportive playstyle aren’t happy either.

[jarlmcqueen]

I only heal in dungeons, but I'll dps if I'm not healing a tank that pulled 15 enemies at once. I can heal and dps on regular pulls, but no so much on large pulls.

[ty_taurus]

The thing about being a healer and the responsibility of keeping the team alive is ultimately that it's a pass-or-fail responsibility. Either your team survived and cleared or they didn't. This doesn't necessarily mean that when you fail, it's all your fault. That's something that's more about mechanics, but it is your fault when your team fails because you couldn't heal the tank in time, or some similar example.

What it does mean is that there's no real way to really separate the bad healers from the good healers from the great healers on healing alone. Heal parsing isn't a thing because there's a hard limit to how much you can heal.

So what does actually establish which healers are bad, which are good, and which are great is definite largely but what else they can do on top of keeping the team alive. Basically, it means being a good healer by doing nothing but keeping the team alive is the bare minimum of what you are expected to do. It's a lot like a job in the real world.

If you're hired as a cashier in a cafe, your responsibility is to manage the cash register at whatever store and assist customers with their purchases. If you do that and only that, you're doing your job. But if there's no one currently purchasing something, what's stopping you from wiping down a table, sweeping a floor, cleaning the bathroom, or wiping some windows? Sure, you weren't hired as the janitor, but that doesn't mean you're incapable of optimizing your time. This doesn't mean go wipe the windows while people are waiting in line to order of course. Your responsibility is first and foremost running that cash register after all. But there's a big difference between Susan who sits at the cash register on her phone when no one's in line, and Bethany who's on her knees cleaning the wall tiles with a scrubber. If you were a business owner, wouldn't you prefer to hire Bethany?

Same is true for Bethany who mains White Mage and finds every opportunity to weave in Glares and Dias where Susan stands there, vacant for 5 seconds before the next raid wide AoE.

This doesn't mean that Susan is necessarily a bad healer if she can keep the team alive, but she's not a great healer--i.e. she's not optimizing her time the best that she can. When it's Susan being lazy, and not doing it even though she can be, then we just don't like Susan and kick her from our static. If Susan is just overwhelmed because she's new to healing, her ilvl is low, or she's learning the fight, then we can understand her plight and work with her as she gets better to hopefully evolve into Bethany.

[Cynfael]

Year after year, the healer discussion is the same around this topic.

Players who desperately want only to focus on healing will reach for any rationale to justify not dealing any damage. It's a selfish choice not to DPS at all as healer, but at least a few people are honest about their reasons and admit that they are either lazy or refusing to DPS because it doesn't fit with their personal vision of what the role should be.

I think many players fall into the "common sense" group of attacking when they have time to do so, because standing around doing nothing is just plain counterintuitive.

And this is EXACTLY what Square Enix said would lead to them removing support for damage meters.

And you know what ......I say go for it. When damage meters are completely banned maybe Healers can be healers again.

Amusingly, with the broad removal of enmity management tools from most classes, players now have a much better idea of how DPS are doing relative to each other just by observing the aggro rankings in the party list, assuming no deaths or other shenanigans. Healers are harder to gauge since healing builds enmity as well, but the general notion of paying attention to other players' performance isn't going away anytime soon.

[Urthdigger]

Which ones? From memory in FFI White Mages only have Holy, in III they only have Aero/Stone(plus Tornado and Quake)/Holy. In V there aren’t any offensive white Mage spells because you can just set black magic. Garnet and Eiko had offensive options through summons and Holy, but that’s because they’re healers and summoners squished together (it would be a bit weird if Ifrit and Shiva healers the party lol. I’m not massively experienced with XI but from what I understand healers there are more focused on buffing/debuffing and healing than offense, particularly for White Mages , and Scholars too were often called on for healing and support (though they can also access offense with Dark Arts).

Not saying that any of this somehow contradicts what you’re saying, just why my own thoughts on the matter differed from your own. And I mean, it would be more weird if everyone perceived things the exact same way. I think the fact that everyone has such different views on what a ‘healer’ is suggest that developers should maybe try and accommodate more than one playstyle for the role. I said that coming into something expecting one thing just to be handed another can feel jarring, but that applies to players who see healers as being more involved and offense-oriented too. Like, if they made all healers full-on ‘only healing’, they’d be ignoring a large part of the playerbase. Conversely though, if they did the same but with DPS and gave healers full-on DPS rotations, they’re still ignoring a large part of the playerbase that would like a more passive/supportive role. People who want a more offensive oriented healer playstyle aren’t happy with current healers, but players who want a more supportive playstyle aren’t happy either.

In FF1, White Mages could use hammers which weren't too bad at melee damage, and had an array of spells specifically for killing undead, often straight up obliterating them unless outleveled.

In FF3, White Magic had a few damaging spells and could only use fairly physically weak staves and rods. This is perhaps the purest healer WHM has ever been, but even then their spells were on par with BLM of similar levels, they just had a larger gap between spells.

In FFIV, Rosa could deal considerable damage with a bow and arrows.

In FFV, as mentioned WHM can just equip black magic on the side with the magic power to use it (The same stat governs both, and is based on character not job)

In FFVII, Aeris (Kinda placed as the WHM of the group given her limit breaks and weapon choice) also is your best BLM due to having one stat factor into both.

In both FFIX and FFX, as stated, healer and summoner were kinda rolled into one.

In FFXI, while the playerbase often preferred WHM to only heal, resting to recover MP whenever they didn't, this was because this was an old school MMO where you literally did not recover MP without resting, making MP regeneration vital for reducing downtime when leveling. In truth, WHM could do a considerable amount of damage with clubs, usually through magical weaponskills like Seraph Strike, and they were the only job able to use the weaponskill Hexastrike until Seekers of Adoulin came out.

Every other FF game lacks a dedicated healer class, or I have no experience with it (coughthirteencough). Regardless, I think it's fair to say that healers have always been expected to deal damage in Final Fantasy, or at least had the capability to do so.

[Toystore]

Year after year, the healer discussion is the same around this topic.

Players who desperately want only to focus on healing will reach for any rationale to justify not dealing any damage. It's a selfish choice not to DPS at all as healer, but at least a few people are honest about their reasons and admit that they are either lazy or refusing to DPS because it doesn't fit with their personal vision of what the role should be.

What a horribly unconstructive post.

Players who desperately want only to focus on dps will reach for any rationale to justify more damage. It's a selfish choice to push DPS maxing as a healer, but at least a few people are honest about their reasons and admit that SE's encounters are lazy and they DPS because of it. Even doesn't fit with their personal vision of what the role should be. Rather than hold SE responsible they're instead trying to push a square peg in a round hole. And force the healing cohort that have been in MMOs forever to accept their corrupted vision of the role which they want no part of.

You see how utterly ridiculous it is to malign people's intentions going by the most absurd strawman of WHY they advocate for a position? Because I can turn around and do it to you and then the bad blood just goes both ways.

[Sloprano]

When it comes to what I expect from healers I'm grouped with for a Duty Roulette, is what I expect from all I get matched with. Tend to adhere to the 25 year-old adage of "Duty Roulette is like a box of chocolate, never know what you're gonna get or who you'll meet."

Discussing it seems like a lost cause, especially in a duty. Myriads of possible well-intentioned and unnamable reasons these two stances clash.

Since roulettes place me with complete strangers I'll probably never see again I just expect us to clear it, using everything from world-record time to 60 minutes. It's other people after all, and they are more often than not very much different from me and have other ideas. Unless I know them or they ask for advice, I don't think I'll change their mind in a Roulette. Just themselves know what they want out of the job.

To get back on topic: For me a healer is "You want heal or hurt? I can do both!"

[Cynfael]

What a horribly unconstructive post.

Players who desperately want only to focus on dps will reach for any rationale to justify more damage. It's a selfish choice to push DPS maxing as a healer, but at least a few people are honest about their reasons and admit that SE's encounters are lazy and they DPS because of it. Even doesn't fit with their personal vision of what the role should be. Rather than hold SE responsible they're instead trying to push a square peg in a round hole. And force the healing cohort that have been in MMOs forever to accept their corrupted vision of the role which they want no part of.

You see how utterly ridiculous it is to malign people's intentions going by the most absurd strawman of WHY they advocate for a position? Because I can turn around and do it to you and then the bad blood just goes both ways.

You can't successfully turn my statement around, because your version of it doesn't make sense.

Take a look at how the game is designed and how much healing downtime is inherent in the healer role. To ask another old question, what exactly do you do when healing isn't imminently required? How is it not selfish to know that you could be doing more and choose not to?

If you want to blame SE for how the game is designed, that's a different talking point. As players we have to deal with the framework we're given.