If they made healers into pure healers, would you still play it?

[PondHollow]

Unless there was a massive increase in Healer DPS potencies, healers with only weak heals would be outright unable to complete solo content, since there are several DPS checks in there and as the slowest class to complete them we frequently need to heal ourselves.

[Sylve]

snip

You said it yourself, We live in a DPS centric world. No-one cares if you're having fun with your job, They only care if you're killing the boss fast enough to satisfy their own opinion on how fast said boss needs to die.
Balance is just numbers. In a world without parsers, we may never have ended up like this. Afterall, as long as the boss dies before enrage then the DPS was 'enough'. But 'enough' is never enough for a lot of people. They see a 5 minute speed kill and believe that's the 'proper' way to do the fight without ever understanding what goes into making such a run possible. You see this play out in games like Monster Hunter a LOT, its not just common here in XIV.

We don't see exclusions in the PF happening much anymore because Square actually managed to get inter-job balance pretty solid this time around. And with that balance comes the general populace's acceptance of pretty much anyone. With quiet blacklists when they don't parse in a way that pleases the Party Leader.

Look at it from a per minute instead of per GCD level. If you get 20 casts of Glare per minute right now, the goal should be weaving those Glares around Healing GCDs.
Right now its Glare x20 -> Drop a couple heals -> Glare x20.

That's why it feels so mind numbing.
But why not take those 20 Glares per minute and spread it out so its not just 1 button pressed 20 times in a row. Mix up the order, not the quantity.

DPS and Healing should have synergy. Break down the wall between Healing and doing Damage. Mix them together so you're deciding moment to moment whether to heal or dps.

[Saefinn]

I've not really seen it since MCH was buffed in HW, so I am not sure it was so pressing of an issue leading up to ShB.

It wouldn't take much to break up those Glares/Broils to be honest, we're not even asking for anything complex. AST out of the three healers is closest to where we need it, because they break up their monotony with cards. AST's biggest raid issue this time was MP management and they've just fixed that. Something like Stone IV -> Glare -> Banish would be a DPS rotation enough to break up some of the monotony and in gaps where you're getting off 10 glares in a row, it's not that crazy.

It just feels they could have taken a balance a different way. I don't think this is the only way they could have done it. Heck, community feedback and made loads of feedback and provided requests on how to address these balance issues, which have consequently been ignored in favour of a dulled DPS rotation

[Sylve]

I've not really seen it since MCH was buffed in HW, so I am not sure it was so pressing of an issue leading up to ShB.

It wouldn't take much to break up those Glares/Broils to be honest, we're not even asking for anything complex. AST out of the three healers is closest to where we need it, because they break up their monotony with cards. AST's biggest raid issue this time was MP management and they've just fixed that. Something like Stone IV -> Glare -> Banish would be a DPS rotation enough to break up some of the monotony and in gaps where you're getting off 10 glares in a row, it's not that crazy.

It just feels they could have taken a balance a different way. I don't think this is the only way they could have done it. Heck, community feedback and made loads of feedback and provided requests on how to address these balance issues, which have consequently been ignored in favour of a dulled DPS rotation

Putting combos on Healer DPS just turns them into whack Red Mages. Lets not do that.

Doing damage as part of your general Healing play should be the goal. Misery is a good example of how that works. You spend GCDs on Afflatus Heals, ending in essentially a 'refund' of the GCDs in damage form.
In that sense, your Healing fed into your DPS. It didn't compete with it like it does now for the most part.

Make your damage dealing thematic to the job instead of just do a spell to make the next spell a little stronger to get to a stronger spell and then start over.
I suggested earlier in the thread about making SCH shields doing their job empowering Selene as an empowered dps cycle to break up that monotony too.

Our dps changed to level the playing field, and it worked. Now that its levelled out, it can be built upon. I just don't want to see us turn into plain DPS jobs with healing cooldowns.

[Saefinn]

It's just an example of how breaking up a monotonous DPS doesn't have to be complicated in order to be more satisfying. It wasn't that complex to begin with. There are all kinds of ways to break it up

Damage was already thematic to the job, but they took that away, when all they really needed to do was find a better place for WHM in that mix after they made WHM's ARR identity redundant. Even then, WHM was in a pretty good place balance wise in SB, it was playability issues it suffered from (SB lilies were dumb for example)

How SCH's DPS worked was fine. How AST contributed arguably was more or less in the right kind of place in SB, although people argue cards got wasted, minor Arcana gave them a use. And if they really needed a card buff, the new Minor Arcana changes would have granted a weaker The Balance as a fail scenario.

But neither were overly complicated.

White Mage was the one who needed love on the DPS and utility side. And they should have got it.

[Risvertasashi]

Assuming this involved a complete content redesign so the healing was actually needed - I'd fall in love with healing all over again, instead of my current tendency that seems to be drifting away from it.

But it'd never work out like that. Even if SE intended to do it, they're not going to rework half a decade's worth of content at all levels, so we'd end up with "pure healer" white mage of stormblood, etc, that would just be massive fails.

[Pomelo]

I'd probably quit healing and just play ranged DPS instead. I like the fact I can heal and dps its alot more exciting than waiting for damage and then reacting to it. I'd spend most of the day not clicking buttons and that would be boring

[Side-Eye]

Job names and class titles do not determine whether it's a "pure healer" -- the CONTENT does that. As long as the content does not require us to spend 90% of our time healing, there's no sense in trying to create or classify such a job.

Before 5.0 came out, when Squeenix said they wanted healers to focus more on healing, I thought they were going to make content to support that aim, and perhaps even revamp older content to make healing a bigger part of those jobs. But they didn't. And I doubt they ever will. So devs need to bring back some complexity (and more options) to the dps kits of all three healers, before they even think about adding a fourth.

[AnotherPerson]

Job names and class titles do not determine whether it's a "pure healer" -- the CONTENT does that. As long as the content does not require us to spend 90% of our time healing, there's no sense in trying to create or classify such a job.

Before 5.0 came out, when Squeenix said they wanted healers to focus more on healing, I thought they were going to make content to support that aim, and perhaps even revamp older content to make healing a bigger part of those jobs. But they didn't. And I doubt they ever will. So devs need to bring back some complexity (and more options) to the dps kits of all three healers, before they even think about adding a fourth.

Agreed here, I don't think they could make content that increases healing intensively seeing how many people still fail to play healers adequately. The majority of the casual playerbase would fail to complete the dungeon runs if they increased healing requirements because the majority of the casual playerbase doesn't actually bother to learn their role and the techniques the player - not the job - itself should use - such as slide casting and weaving. They don't optimize their oGCDs and mostly use them in a pinch in favor for GCD healing. If healing requirements were tuned up, majority of these players would riot. Although I'm all for bringing back the quality for healers as a whole, this wouldn't be a good way to bring players into healing since the responsibility of the job went up to the point where the healer determines whether the group wipes or not.

In retrospect, if healing requirements did go up, RDM would also be indirectly nerfed - vercure being used as an emergency tool with dualcast to get the same potency as a Cure II would no longer serve its purpose since damage is a lot more frequent to the point that they would not be able to save the team in the pinch with increased unavoidable raidwide damage.

[bundythenoob]

Job names and class titles do not determine whether it's a "pure healer" -- the CONTENT does that. As long as the content does not require us to spend 90% of our time healing, there's no sense in trying to create or classify such a job.

Before 5.0 came out, when Squeenix said they wanted healers to focus more on healing, I thought they were going to make content to support that aim, and perhaps even revamp older content to make healing a bigger part of those jobs. But they didn't. And I doubt they ever will. So devs need to bring back some complexity (and more options) to the dps kits of all three healers, before they even think about adding a fourth.

hard agree. without the game's entire content getting a revamp, we would just end up in a worse situation. plus, the battle medic aspect of FFXIVs healers has always been better received than making them into pure healers.

SHB got the balance at lv 80 in terms of what healers can heal, but square should definitely look into fixing the dps side of the kit. maybe if they hired a dedicated healer developer who actually plays healer jobs (and isnt just 1 of the 4 reluctant dps dev) they could fix the issues, but they definitely need to do something by 6.0, or else most of the healer playerbase might end up leaving, and the remainders would just be the cure 1 bots that refuse to put in the effort to learn their job.