General Community Resistant to Healer Damage?

[Dyvid]

I honestly feel that the best fix for Healers is change the concept to Healer/Support for all 3 jobs. Let them deal damage through party/raid buff/debuff abilities and spells. I know current the some healers have raid utility but I'm talking about jumping in the water rather than getting your toes wet. When not healing your should be buffing / debuffing.

[MirronTulaxia]

I feel like I wouldn't care so much about my 2-3 buttons for DPSing as a healer if the healing was more engaging... That said, I'm not entirely sure how this could be made so without some big changes. One idea I had floating about was of different kinds of healing damage which would necessitate different kinds of skills. In real life, there are instances where different protocols or algorithms are followed depending on how a patient presents. Here's a simple example for a patient presentation with a possible acute coronary syndrome:



Now before you roast me alive, I know the comparison is not perfect. In-game, I find it unlikely that you'd be triaging someone for a possible myocardial infarction in the middle of combat but the algorithm serves to illustrate the kind of decision-making that often goes into... well, medicine. I am also not saying that the nuances of real-life medical care should somehow find their way into FFXIV, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't yearning for a bit more complexity. As others have pointed out, it feels like you're just making bars up when they go down and I find that much too reductionistic to be engaging. There is some modicum of complexity to be had right now since you also gotta know when damage is dished out... but that's more of an encounter design consideration rather than the healing itself.

Honestly I like the idea of having to watch different gauges for healers. One of the things I was toying with in a different game with elemental affinities and such was different elemental healing too, which makes it important to pay attention to the element you use. While something like that doesn't work here they could certainly have multiple types of healing to keep track of.

Though at the same time I do worry a bit about the idea of Healers being responsible for MP, it certainly seems like a decent change.

[Gemina]

Absolutely hate this mentality. It is never your co-healers fault for a wipe or because you could not DPS, that is such an unhealthy mindset to have. I had a savage fight where my cohealer literally healed less than the WAR and I still did more DPS than her or either tank, unless you're at ultimate level content, your cohealer is not the reason you can't use your kit to it's fullest, I don't care how braindead they are.

So let me get straight: In this particular savage encounter, your co-healer did less HPS than the WAR; yet despite this, you were able to solo heal the encounter while also sustaining higher pDPS than everyone except the DPS jobs? Was this encounter cleared? Because if it was, it's going to get a little bit tougher to call these encounters "savage" if half the team is performing sub-optimally. I get that you had some assistance from the WAR, but I would also be inclined to say that the DPS players were also picking up the slack in that encounter by using their own mitigation and self heal tools, and just generally not taking unnecessary damage and have perfect mechanic and rotation execution. I hope you patted them all in the back, and not just yourself.

Don't color me incredulous. I'm actually not doubting you. Ironically though, situations like yours is exactly why they won't change anything with healing. This doesn't tell the devs that they can add more DPS skills for healers; it tells them that there is a serious problem if one healer can do all of that. I don't doubt you because I'm already aware of such situations happening, and have been happening since I've been here. This is an encounter design issue.

Approaching from the angle of "Look, I can solo heal savage AND DPS, so there is no reason why we can't have more DPS skills." is exercising futility trying to use an exception as the rule. If I was a healer interested in running savage, and I was told that I have to cause more damage than the tanks and also solo heal, I would probably tell that person where they can go.

If we want to get the devs to add more DPS skills for healers, our downtime isn't going to convince them. Why would it after what? 8 years? The real question is how do you convince a dev team to add more DPS skills when they don't want healers focusing on DPS? Many of you continue to do so though, and they continue to take away. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it is wrong to fill downtime with DPS. Not at all. I am however saying that I believe the devs strongly dislike the mentality.

[GrimGale]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it is wrong to fill downtime with DPS. Not at all. I am however saying that I believe the devs strongly dislike the mentality.

Healing downtime prevalence is a fact at this point. Look at dungeon and savage logs.

If the devs dislike the mentality of "having to fill healer downtime with dps" what exactly do they want us to fill that time with?

[Billythepancake]

Healing downtime prevalence is a fact at this point. Look at dungeon and savage logs.

If the devs dislike the mentality of "having to fill healer downtime with dps" what exactly do they want us to fill that time with?

Healer DPS isn't even optional in fights. E8S is literally impossible without healer damage, actually impossible to clear. You could have the 4 best DPS and 2 best tanks in the world, all BiS and all playing perfectly, and they would not have the damage to clear that fight if healers didn't DPS. Let's not forget MSQ where you will also have to DPS, especially in the several 1v1s it throws you into. If DPS is going to be required it should be more interesting than spamming 1 button.

[Deceptus]

Healer DPS isn't even optional in fights. E8S is literally impossible without healer damage, actually impossible to clear. You could have the 4 best DPS and 2 best tanks in the world, all BiS and all playing perfectly, and they would not have the damage to clear that fight if healers didn't DPS. Let's not forget MSQ where you will also have to DPS, especially in the several 1v1s it throws you into. If DPS is going to be required it should be more interesting than spamming 1 button.

At minimum ilvl. I think, as has been stated by the devs before, that healer dps is expected more when you're at the ilvl or below it. But they're supposed to have balanced the fight with minimal healing dps.

Whether that is still true or not, they won't really say.

Which is extremely counter-intuitive. As ilvl goes up, dps goes up as does tank survivability, meaning healers will have less to heal and MORE time to dps.

[Billythepancake]

At minimum ilvl. I think, as has been stated by the devs before, that healer dps is expected more when you're at the ilvl or below it. But they're supposed to have balanced the fight with minimal healing dps.

Whether that is still true or not, they won't really say.

Which is extremely counter-intuitive. As ilvl goes up, dps goes up as does tank survivability, meaning healers will have less to heal and MORE time to dps.

Admittedly E8s is the exception,rather than the rule, t
But even in full bis, you need healer DPS to clear. You need around 90k rDPS or so to clear Shiva. The 2 best tanks and 4 best DPS in the world, combined, right now would pull 85.9k in Shiva. Granted that 90k may have been from before they removed add phase from the parse, so it could be "lower" now. So, at best, you'd be able to clear Shiva by the skin of your teeth, assuming your tanks and DPS were absolutely flawless. Realistically, you need them to clear it, no way that fight was designed for people to play perfectly so the healers could do nothing, not even ultimate is designed for people to play perfectly.

[Liam_Harper]

At minimum ilvl. I think, as has been stated by the devs before, that healer dps is expected more when you're at the ilvl or below it. But they're supposed to have balanced the fight with minimal healing dps.

No. At maximum ilv.

Shiva Savage has a dps requirement just over 90k. 4 dps and 2 tanks playing at 99th percentile in BiS 500ilv gear can only reach about 84k max. The healers dps is absolutely required.

Granted that 90k may have been from before they removed add phase from the parse, so it could be "lower" now.

Possibly true. From a glance at the website that shall not be named, 0% wipes were happening with 85.5k. Still completely unrealistic.

[Crushnight]

Healer downtime should feel rewarding to get, you are playing well enough that you don't need to heal and can dps, problem is getting to healer downtime is too easy with current content design philosophy and healer kits being too powerful, all the while the actual downtime is too simple, this makes an incredibly dull experience for healers who like to push themselves as far as they can go.


Shiva Savage is an exception but atm in ilv 500 gear it's impossible without healer Dps, no matter how good tanks and Dps are without the healer Dpsing you will hit enrage.

The content design team has shown what they expect out of healers at that level, if people don't like it they either get better or move on.

Personally I want a normal mode trial(can be optional one but preferably msq one) that would lock both healers away in seperate rooms and they must dps 1 add while healing another, thats it just 2 targets, normal mode having very low dps/heal requirements, failing it wipes the group and watch the Slyphies rage mwahahhahahahahaha.

[Gemina]

Healing downtime prevalence is a fact at this point. Look at dungeon and savage logs.

If the devs dislike the mentality of "having to fill healer downtime with dps" what exactly do they want us to fill that time with?

Good question. I wish they would answer it.

I assume that they still want us to DPS. In Hall of Novice they actually tell healers to toss some offensive skills when heals are not needed. They are just adamant about not giving healers a complex rotation. And I don't even mean a rotation that has skills combo into each other. Once you have a certain amount of offensive skills that interact with each other, then you have a 'rotation' (see pre ShB SCH). Many will say that this type of healing was really fun and engaging. It was also required for healers to push deeps as much as possible in high-end content, and this bled into casual content wherein healers were so focused on DPSing that they completely forgot about their primary duty. You don't need data for this. All you had to do was your daily roulettes, and it is still happening.

Understand that my statements aren't really my own arguments so much as they are a reflection of the status quo. However, I should state that when I say they dislike the mentality, I don't mean they don't want healers DPSing during downtime. I mean that they dislike the mentality of green-DPS healers. Of course, they never officially stated that, and never will. But look around. Look at the healer DPS kit and what has been taken expansion after expansion. How can any other conclusion be surmised? And I'm a 'bottle half full' person.