Why do healers feel like they get a punishment for getting better.

[monk-dps]

Ah yes. Why ask for a couple skills to make an engaging rotation in all scenarios
coughIncludingOverworldActivitiesLikeFatesOrEurekacough
When instead I could ask for the way more realistic overhaul in the way that encounters are designed, adding in a massive workload just to appease a quarter of the Full Party.

You may not like my answer but it's true. Your fix doesn't actually fix the biggest issues healers have. Encounter design. I'm sorry but healers have been in this state for awhile. Remember cleric stance? Remember the DPS or not DPS debate? What could fix all that? Oh I dunno.. the way encounters are made. Hell that's a more doable fix then some of the crap on the main page people ask for anyway.

[tikiwiki]

That wouldn't fix anything. The issue isn't the amount of skills.. it's the encounter design thats the issue. Fix that first.

a dps rotation makes it so were not mashing one button most of the fight that does fix the issue making healers constantly heal would require a complete redesign of all 3 healers other wise youre still spamming one button it just heals instead of doing damage, and we see that exact out come in TEA during the brute justice and cruise chaser burn phase.

[YusiKha]

You may not like my answer but it's true. Your fix doesn't actually fix the biggest issues healers have. Encounter design. I'm sorry but healers have been in this state for awhile. Remember cleric stance? Remember the DPS or not DPS debate? What could fix all that? Oh I dunno.. the way encounters are made. Hell that's a more doable fix then some of the crap on the main page people ask for anyway.

It doesn’t matter if I like your answer or not. It isn’t true, it’s an opinion. It’s an unrealistic opinion at that.

The ‘dps or don’t dps’ isn’t a debate. It’s one side flinging around ‘developer intent’ citing the same few out of context and out of date quotes, mistranslations, all the while looking to avoid responsibilities.
Healers should dps, it’s how the game has been designed since Heavensward dropped and healing has moved to oGCD.

So we should accept that encounter design will stay, and adapt the healers to it, rather than adapt the encounters to the healers.
And we do that by giving the healers a more involved damaging kit.
A kit that the antidps crowd is free to continue ignoring.

[Yorumi]

So we should accept that encounter design will stay, and adapt the healers to it, rather than adapt the encounters to the healers.
And we do that by giving the healers a more involved damaging kit.
A kit that the antidps crowd is free to continue ignoring.

They really should turn healers more into support classes to distinguish them from dps. Giving them somewhat complicated support skills to manage would keep them from dpsing. Like with AST if they spent most of their gcds working building up card buffs for the party and the buffs were significant enough to make up what healer dps normally. Without stepping on Smn toes a SCH as per FF3 is still a summoner so they could have some complex rituals for summoning different things that buff the party or do damage on their own. I don't really know what you'd do with whm thematically but you get the idea.

That would serve the purpose of making healers a lot more fun and interesting but also not require redesigns of fights and keep them from just being another dps with some off gcd heals.

[Irenia]

It doesn’t matter if I like your answer or not. It isn’t true, it’s an opinion. It’s an unrealistic opinion at that.

This post as a whole doesn't sit well with me.

First, understand that there are two groups of people that are dissatisfied with the current healer design. One wants a more robust DPS package so that they aren't stuck spamming a single button. The other wants encounters that are dangerous, so the fantasy of the healer can be fulfilled.

Now, this fantasy is not to be a simple healbot, as you might imagine. After all, the DPS argument is rather similar to the "fish for Balance" argument, where people said they were having more fun using all the cards before Shadowbringers, optimization be damned (this being the internet, this tended to be written as "balance-fishing is bad", though). So, why was being suboptimal more fun?

If the fantasy of being an exceptional DPS is dealing all the damage and destroying their foes, and the fantasy of being an exceptional Tank is taking hits that no mortal man can survive then the fantasy of the exceptional healer is the one that can keep the party up, especially in unplanned for situations. And now we can see the conflict.

Let's bring this back to this topic's premise. Assume you are a new healer, and everything is new and scary. You get better, and now dungeons are boring and predictable. You do EX primals, and they are exciting at first, but later get boring and predictable. You do 24 man raids, and they are exciting, but... well, sometimes you get many bad players and you are secretly smiling inside. You learn Savage, clearing it, yet making it boring. Maybe you even do Ultimate, but that thrill only lasts until you and your team master it. Indeed, getting better makes things boring.

Many decide to just become a DPS that has to press a button every now and then to prevent a wipe. And that's fine, but now you are in a different fantasy altogether. One that is closer to the DPS... Or maybe more meta - the fantasy of continual skill growth is a valid one , after all. And because SE's current healer design doesn't commit to either extreme, you are probably dissatisfied. But the other side does have a valid desire, and should not just be written off just because they want to be clutch.

That said, I doubt we're getting anything for the healer fantasy ever. It would be better for SE to commit more to the healer DPS idea and make more content like Deep Dungeons and Eureka to push the concept of Clutch.

[Elladie]

I have a question.

Why, OP, do you post a new thread about your issues with healers every few days? A huge thread with loads of replies is far more likely to be effective. All you're accomplishing now is making people sigh when they see your name and hurriedly skip past to something else

[Crushnight]

I have a question.

Why, OP, do you post a new thread about your issues with healers every few days? A huge thread with loads of replies is far more likely to be effective. All you're accomplishing now is making people sigh when they see your name and hurriedly skip past to something else

3 things

1. I'm bored we are in a lull and I am just bored when not progging ultimate.
2. They are different enough to warrant different threads, 1 is about BLU and healer gameplay, 1 is about me hoping ast doesn't get buffed just to up numbers, the other on page 1(that is not this one which is about how healers feel punished for getting better by getting more bored faster) is about what healers could lose.
3. If anything the mega thread about Whm in SB proved is it don't matter if in one place if they want to ignore the issues they just while.

[monk-dps]

a dps rotation makes it so were not mashing one button most of the fight that does fix the issue making healers constantly heal would require a complete redesign of all 3 healers other wise youre still spamming one button it just heals instead of doing damage, and we see that exact out come in TEA during the brute justice and cruise chaser burn phase.

I can't see how fixing the way a fight handles damage wouldn't fix this issue. Isn't a thing healers complaining about is nothing hurts? We know when everything hits etc? Change that. Cause asking SE to give healers DPS rotations isn't going to work. SE purposely wants healers to not be dps, it's why cleric stance is gone. They want the role to be easier for new players. Are they doing it wrong yes...but just giving healers DPS rotations isn't the answer. It's not like they had them in the first place. They had more dots but they didn't have a DPS rotation.. not like monk drg or ninja :c

[Urthdigger]

Changing encounter design wouldn't really help for one very basic reason: They would have to redesign most of the ENTIRE GAME in order to do so.

FFXIV is what I like to call a mechanics-driven MMO, in contrast to the resource-driven MMOs back in the day. It places an emphasis on properly executing mechanics, usually punishing players with extra damage and one-shots, whereas older resource-driven MMOs held onto MP-regeneration with an iron fist, making every ounce spent result in more downtime between fights. Healers were "pure healers" back in the day because often enough the extra damage didn't speed up a fight enough to justify the extra time spent taking a knee. I highly doubt SE would change it back this way, there's still games out there that follow this system (FFXI, or check out just about any MUD), and it kinda went away for a reason. People finding out they'll need to wait a few minutes between pulls will absolutely riot over the change.

Ok, so what about making things hit harder? There we run into the problem of the razor edge of ideal balance. Let's say there's an ideal spot where your healing barely outpaces the incoming damage, thus requiring you to constantly heal with absolutely no opportunities for DPSing (as you seem to be asking for.) Ok, sure, but it's more than just the monsters that form this equation: Your gear, the tank's gear, and the ability of everyone to avoid excess damage all play into this. Should any one of these variables shift, it throws the balance entirely out of place and the encounter is then rendered either unwinnable, or the healer starts to gain that dreaded abomination of downtime.

Lastly, let's get into the mentality of a healer in this new system. If you look at tanks and DPS, they're allowed and even encouraged to improve themselves. Optimizing substats, acquiring better gear, improving rotations, the other roles have ways to improve their skill, to be of better use to their party, to strive for ever greater heights. The healer, on the other hand, has three possible outcomes. The first is that it becomes easily the most difficult role in the game, requiring perfection throughout the entirety of the run to hold things together, and if you thought people yelled at healers a lot now just wait until you see that hellscape. The second scenario is one where due to something like caps on healing, stats meaning absolutely diddly on cure potencies, or some other limitation, once you reach the stat and skill threshold to pass content it becomes literally impossible to improve further. The third scenario, one very similar to our current state, is one where once you pass the minimum required to comfortably clear content, you can improve but you're actively encouraged not to, as the only reward for doing better is having to wait longer before you can do anything again.

[Irenia]

Changing encounter design wouldn't really help for one very basic reason: They would have to redesign most of the ENTIRE GAME in order to do so.

...

While I agree that redesigning the entire game is...awkward, you seem to sidestep the idea of making things unpredictable. The random mechanics/spawns/etc. would be simpler than the elaborate song and dance we have now, but the advantage is that there would be no fight timeline to follow, and you can actually emergency heal. No longer following a plan, the players are reacting, until the crisis is over.

Then again, people in this game sure love to dance to the plan, so getting something like this that is actually accepted as hardcore content is... hard.