WHM: An idea to change the freecure trap and to encourage using damage spells

[Veis_Alveare]

When we say healers should dps in dungeons, no one (sensible) means you should somehow manage to keep a paper tank and 3 aoe-addict dragoons alive while simultaneously topping the meters. If your tank is demanding every GCD just to keep them alive then by all means pour heals into them. That's fine.

Of course not.

Your peak performance is always going to be limited by your party as a healer.

If those drgs like to stand in orange that much though... maybe let them learn that it's bad. Enabling that sort of thing for a whole instance will only reinforce the idea that what they're doing is the right thing.

Healers might have to adjust but we don't need to be the living embodiment of the "healers adjust" meme. It sounded to me like Fujiko was expecting to keep everyone alive or the time, or that doing so makes a good healer. In reality individual players do a lot more to ensure their survival than a healer does, we just need to be there for the unavoidable damage.

[Almagnus1]

IMO I'd rather change Free Cure to be something akin to the RDM mechanic Dualcast, except it's proc'd off of only casting either Cure.

The problem with healing skill chains is that you only ever need THAT much healing when things are going south... like "my group is full of DRGs that are competing for floor aggro" bad.

[ICountFrom0]

Freecure is useful, even needed for healing down in the lowest levels, but it needs to go away, or transform into something else.

Into what? Don't ask me, I'm not good at healers, and even worse at balance.

[Ashemmi]

"I think, expecting from healer to do high dps in the dungeons...it's something laughable. I think healer job is healing and if they do dps that's very beneficial. I, as a new in healer role in FFXIV I think we don't have a reason to complain compared for example wow healer classes.

There can be a great deal of pressure, yes. At times the party makeup can be downright frustrating.

Working into being more efficient is absolutely ok. You're also subject to a bit of a class divide now, there are some who think healers *shouldn't* DPS. We don't pay their sub, but objectively the game is designed around a healer contributing. Aside from people making mistakes, the content truly doesn't push out that much damage. What do you do with the spare time, and exactly how much is there?

Let's look at it objectively, lets say a dungeon is 14 minutes long and your GCD is 2.5, that's 336 possible GCD. With a decent party, and the correct use of skills I would be willing to bet the number of healing casts required sits at about 20% to mitigate and more than compensate for expected damage. Now consider a number of our healing spells are both OGCD and instant. This means there is a great deal of time where we aren't actively healing. Following the guideline of "always casting", there is only one option which makes sense. DPS.

From the opposite side, the content, in general, is not developed around the healer "needing" to DPS. Savage tier and some EX trials being an exception. Why the sudden shift? It's not really so sudden! As you increase in levels, your healing becomes more efficient and you learn the boundaries of your kit. These fights are designed for players who have done exactly that.

I don't think the expectation is that a healer does 'high' DPS when measured against a DPS. I think the expectation becomes more about you having a very efficient healing toolkit, and you should have a significant amount of spare time which functionally can (and really should) be used towards DPS.

[glamazon]

I don’t mind doing damage but it shouldn’t be the focus. Healers heal and support the party. There needs to be a greater emphasis on buffs and debuffs for our “dps” contribution.

[MartaDemireux]

I think it's also important to realize how huge of a change it would be to make every encounter require healing 100% of the time. It would take a massive amount of resources to retool nearly 10yrs worth of content. There will always be downtime and DPSing is an effective use of that - and is a type of support in itself.

And to touch on the weavability mentioned last page: Fluid Aura should absolutely be turned into WHMs Scathe/Ruin II. Reapplying Dia while moving out of AoE just feels bad when it's already freshly applied (assuming nobody could use a Regen).

[Almagnus1]

A bit of a "hold my beer!" thought, but what if there was a trait that removed Free cure but replaced it with a mechanic where GCD heal that heals for at least 1 HP on initial cast generates a lily?

That would help make the GCD heals relevant... but it also means we'd blood lily FAR more often so it would need to be reworked a bit to not be overly broken.

[Veis_Alveare]

I don’t mind doing damage but it shouldn’t be the focus. Healers heal and support the party. There needs to be a greater emphasis on buffs and debuffs for our “dps” contribution.

I really don't want to be reliant on randoms for my dps. That's the best part of WHM currently - not needing any help to kill the things.

Let's not give AST's one weakness to WHM and SCH.

Most players are... not great. Buffing someone doing dps numbers from an expansion ago feels bad.

[Seraphor]

I really don't want to be reliant on randoms for my dps. That's the best part of WHM currently - not needing any help to kill the things.

Let's not give AST's one weakness to WHM and SCH.

Most players are... not great. Buffing someone doing dps numbers from an expansion ago feels bad.

In the content that matters, you should be with players you trust to play their jobs properly.
Do you not have an FC, a static, friends on your friendslist, or anything like that?

[Ashemmi]

I don’t mind doing damage but it shouldn’t be the focus. Healers heal and support the party. There needs to be a greater emphasis on buffs and debuffs for our “dps” contribution.

That is one way where flavor can come into healers. Not all healers need to be party buffers/debuffers, but one certainly could be. Presently we have AST providing shielding, WHM as a brute-force/regen healer, and SCH as a hybrid. The same could be done with buffs and debuffs. AST, where it already has a start, could play that role. WHM might lack that and offer more brute force, wether in DPS or healing. SCH would again sit happily in the middle. Diversify the jobs a little more, especially given that some effects don't need duplication in an eight man, and breathe more life into the class a whole.