General Community Resistant to Healer Damage?

[Aeonblade]

It really depends on the player/healer. I've had a pretty hefty string of healers that thought themselves capable of DPSing and Healing at the same time and were woefully mistaken about their aptitude to be certain. It has been pretty nightmarish, with the exception of a couple of A+ rank healers I've run into. I'd love for EVERY healer to be DPSing while they heal, but some people just do not have the ability to manage both in their brains at the same time, and that is ok too.

[technole]

Either way, its clear that the playerbase doesn't play healers the way Devs apparently designed them to be played. Either by simply healing with OGCDs and dps the rest of the time or using only one healer per full party.

Foxclon is a WHM main, he's pretty good at the game, based on his adventures on twitter and him playing on livestreams. YoshiP said it himself healer DPS is required for early savage clears. Clearing Shiva Savage on week one was an extremely hard feat that it was Japan that took the world first crown.

Solo healing isn't even optimal in savage play. Different skills between healers line-up for mechanics. For example, Scholar is best of the three healers to "heal" the beginning of any fight in the game. All of their oGCD resources are available at a pull. Spread-lo on pulls, fairy for first AoEs, etc. White Mage doesn't have anything aside from single heals and assize, which is prioritized in an opener damage, holding assize until something falls out of the sky means you lose casts per-fight. Meanwhile they need to manually grow lilies with time or be casting, and that's not optimal.

It's the same as tanking, it's always lousy to just let one tank run out of cooldowns when the other's is fully up, which puts more strain on healers, and therefore lowers raid DPS. In Savage/Ultimate they already force discourage one "main tank" for a whole fight with debuffs, one-shoting a tank if they don't swap. Normal modes they don't force it lately, but they kindly encourage like back on New Titan, whereas it's obviously required in savage.

[GrimGale]

Foxclon is a WHM main, he's pretty good at the game, based on his adventures on twitter and him playing on livestreams. YoshiP said it himself healer DPS is required for early savage clears. Clearing Shiva Savage on week one was an extremely hard feat that it was Japan that took the world first crown.

Solo healing isn't even optimal in savage play. Different skills between healers line-up for mechanics. For example, Scholar is best of the three healers to "heal" the beginning of any fight in the game. All of their oGCD resources are available at a pull. Spread-lo on pulls, fairy for first AoEs, etc. White Mage doesn't have anything aside from single heals and assize, which is prioritized in an opener damage, holding assize until something falls out of the sky means you lose casts per-fight. Meanwhile they need to manually grow lilies with time or be casting, and that's not optimal.

It's the same as tanking, it's always lousy to just let one tank run out of cooldowns when the other's is fully up, which puts more strain on healers, and therefore lowers raid DPS. In Savage/Ultimate they already force discourage one "main tank" for a whole fight with debuffs, one-shoting a tank if they don't swap. Normal modes they don't force it lately, but they kindly encourage like back on New Titan, whereas it's obviously required in savage.

I agree about solo healing not being part of the argument regarding the balancing of DPS and Healing. If somebody uses solo healing as some sort of couter-argument to healers spent most of their time casting DPSing spells, he or she do not understand your argument of solo healing not being optimal in savage.

In any case, the argument of "Healers are subjected to long and common stretches of healing downtime, therefore removing skills that fill up that time is clearly a bad idea." still remains. Though, I guess the idea of simplifying the healer's dps kit is not necessarily bad. If all healers had a somewhat engaging kit to fill up said time, such as AST with card-play (Or at least a satisfying iteration of card-play), the one-button spam would not be so jarring.

[althenawhm]

Normal modes they don't force it lately, but they kindly encourage like back on New Titan

A couple of the Omega fights, like 4, had that and as a healer I cant say I really notice the debuff in normal modes.
Just another symptom of the devs handling healers with baby gloves.

[Granyala]

I genuinely think that you should give the Ultimates a try! A lot of what you're asking for already exists in those fights, so it might be worthwhile to give it a shot.

Yes, I'm sure Ultimates are great. But what about the rest of the game?
Of course I don't expect or want savage compexity, speed requirements and difficulty in content that is typically done by uncoordinated groups.
But -a little- more danger should be in the cards, no? A little more incoming damage. Not feeling as if I outgear a brand new dungeon to the point of total triviality would be nice.

If content was a bit meaner, we would heal more. Add a few more DPS toys to move away from the "mash [1] for 28 seconds, then refresh your DoT" and it would be perfect.

If all healers had a somewhat engaging kit to fill up said time, such as AST with card-play (Or at least a satisfying iteration of card-play), the one-button spam would not be so jarring.

That's an interesting alternative to consider. Instead of mashing a DPS button, we would build up group support. Hmm... I like it!

[althenawhm]

While a support GCD isnt a terrible idea, it does nothing for solo quests and instances.

[Gemina]

Ouch, what an ugly opinion about being a healer.

I picked with my Main (back in summer 2015) the starting-class Conjurer out of free will - and never regretted this decision up to this day.

Might be because I played FF3 / 4 / Tactics Advance / A2 / all 13-parts before joining ARR a ka HW, but I always feel very comfortable with commanding a healer instead of tank / attacker / supporter.
->Especially when I know an instance, I think I can do the most for a group when I care for their HP--- explicitly when I happen to play a Shieldhealer, I can prevent unnecessary deaths.
(It's also a relief when I don't have to ask a healer for throwing now and then an attack, to be honest. I think as long as everybody isn't in danger, healers should definitely feel free to attack.)

Well, the truth often hurts. Even if you are ok with how healers play currently (more accurate to say you are ok with what is currently demanded from them), it doesn't mean there aren't some serious underlying issues with the role.

When I post my healer gripes, my issues have nothing to do with the DPS aspect of the role. It pertains mostly to the neglect from the dev team when it comes to healers. The most recent solo instance for the relic quest is a great example of this. The entire encounter is designed around putting out damage while avoiding it. No specific healer or tank mechanics are present in that instance. You even have a heal bot to invalidate your toolkit should you go in as a healer. It is things like that. Another example is if you've ever been dead against a boss that has ample HP left only to watch your team clear it anyway despite no heals from you because you're Ko'd. This is an encounter design issue that directly affects healers.

I honestly could list things all day that are attributed to dev neglect towards the role. This doesn't mean that I don't find enjoyment in playing, otherwise I wouldn't. It simply means I want more attention paid to this role.

[Barraind]

Heh. Thats why the best way forward is gradual changes to boss mechanics. Random hit here, random hit there and just slooooowly introduce it as a thing that appears more and more frequently in future updates.

I really dont know why boss damage outside tankbusters and raidwides is as negligable as it is.

One of the things we've learned over the last couple decades is that the more you put damage on castbar telegraphed attacks, the easier healing gets. I should be worried about big boss attacks, but I should also have to care about what happens in-between to maximize avoid/mitigation.

If I never have to worry about boss melee as a tank or healer, only one thing every 30/45/60 seconds means anything, and once you can survive those, defensive anythings and efficient healing gets meaningless.

[Awha]

I wish they just made a healer that healed through doing damage either they are required to do damage to generate a resource to heal something of that nature. I get SE does not want to give every healer a full dps kit, but at the very least they should add one.

[GucciSan]

I wish they just made a healer that healed through doing damage either they are required to do damage to generate a resource to heal something of that nature. I get SE does not want to give every healer a full dps kit, but at the very least they should add one.

I don’t think they would since the game and playerbase are so DPS centric it would be the only healer anyone would ever want. Everyone would want it for everything from dungeons PUGs to statics; why take any other healer when this one could get the clear faster than the rest since its whole kit is (theoretically) focused on damage?

They could go the other route and balance their output to be slightly higher than the other healers for balance but then people would rightfully complain about the low payoff for their efforts; why play this healer when you get the same amount of damage the others get from hitting one button?

It just seems like too much of a balancing nightmare for them to consider it.