Final Fantasy XIV’s healer problem and how it’s kind of unsolvable

[Gemina]

You're allowed to criticize an artist even if you cannot make the same art he does. Also, you cannot take a statement made in 2015 which has been PROVEN wrong into account for this. Things have changed, and you can quite easily see the fact that healer DPS is factored into content by simply looking at FFLogs. Check any week one Shiva log, and you will plainly see a wealth of information pointing to the simple fact that healer DPS was required. End of.

Sure I can. I can continue to do this until someone provides a link to a source where the devs made the decision to change this. You can post fflogs all day. None of them are an official statement from the dev team that they have reversed their decision. As I said before, it is what it is. You lot need to understand, my agrument isn't that healer DPS isn't required to clear savage, so you can honestly miss me with that nonsense. My argument is that the devs stated that healer DPS is not factored into DPS checks. This is a fact, not an opinion, and I provided the source. It could have been made in 2011 and it still would be true.

Now, if this is no longer the case, and the devs did indeed start factoring healer DPS into the DPS checks, feel free to provide the source link. If you can do so, then it will effectively invalidate the previous links. Quite honestly though, I grew sick of this argument back in 2015; it actually doesn't have a whole lot of relevance anymore because healers actively DPS now, and the problem back then was them not doing it. Your precious fflogs should be a testament to that, if a testament to anything. Do the devs even use that data for anything?

I would much rather get back to the crux of the healer problem which is our downtime. Anyone else?

[Rivinhal]

Sure I can. I can continue to do this until someone provides a link to a source where the devs made the decision to change this. You can post fflogs all day. None of them are an official statement from the dev team that they have reversed their decision. As I said before, it is what it is. You lot need to understand, my agrument isn't that healer DPS isn't required to clear savage, so you can honestly miss me with that nonsense. My argument is that the devs stated that healer DPS is not factored into DPS checks. This is a fact, not an opinion, and I provided the source. It could have been made in 2011 and it still would be true.

I mean think about this logically... The data we're citing is recent. And the statement you're citing is from years ago. What else was different about the game at the time of that statement?

The reality is that actions speak louder than words. And the fact that healer DPS is 100% required for savage DPS checks at even the highest level of play is pretty indicative that the statement you're citing from 5 years ago is out of date. Their philosophy has changed. Maybe it hasn't changed in regards to all content, I think we'd all agree on that, but it clearly has changed in regards to high-end content. It's very clearly being factored in there. Pretending it isn't just feels a bit silly, especially considering the circumstances.

I don't understand why this is such a sticking point tbh.

[Videra]

Sure I can. I can continue to do this until someone provides a link to a source where the devs made the decision to change this. You can post fflogs all day. None of them are an official statement from the dev team that they have reversed their decision. As I said before, it is what it is. You lot need to understand, my agrument isn't that healer DPS isn't required to clear savage, so you can honestly miss me with that nonsense. My argument is that the devs stated that healer DPS is not factored into DPS checks. This is a fact, not an opinion, and I provided the source. It could have been made in 2011 and it still would be true.

Now, if this is no longer the case, and the devs did indeed start factoring healer DPS into the DPS checks, feel free to provide the source link. If you can do so, then it will effectively invalidate the previous links. Quite honestly though, I grew sick of this argument back in 2015; it actually doesn't have a whole lot of relevance anymore because healers actively DPS now, and the problem back then was them not doing it. Your precious fflogs should be a testament to that, if a testament to anything. Do the devs even use that data for anything?

I would much rather get back to the crux of the healer problem which is our downtime. Anyone else?

I mean, you're very wrong - and insistent on standing by an outdated statement from 2015. Yes, it does matter that it's an ancient statement. There's a cognitive dissonance between Yoshi-P, the battle team, and the player base at large. You can quite literally argue until the cows come home that the game director said healer DPS isn't factored in once, therefore it isn't, but the data you are being presented with proves that very wrong. Yes, I'll admit, healer DPS isn't factored in for all content - but clearly it is for savage. And you're acting like healers can or should be able to half-AFK healbot through it.

As to the crux of the discussion - Healer downtime is literally just boring right now because for two of the classes it's been reduced to mashing one button and another every 30 seconds. Every healer has lost DPS tools, WHM just feels the least bad because it at least has assize and Misery - even if Misery is a loss to use. FFXIV's healers will never have more to heal outside of Ultimate Content, because SE isn't willing to try to shift to triage healing. They can't without a major overhaul of every game system. So the obvious solution here is to make the DPS uptime of healers - which is a lot - more stimulating. A means of doing this is quite literally just scooting on back to the old style of each healer in Stormblood, because two out of there lost more than simple DPS.

Scholars lost their faerie management, Astrologians lost their card management. Both were key parts of their playstyles, and I'll admit I'm more familiar with the former. Playing SCH was like managing two characters, and at a high level, it was very rewarding.