Healer Unhappiness exists on the Jap Healing Forums as well.

[Irenia]

Why do I want WHM to not have damage abilities with variable potencies proportional to party performance (aka raid "utility")?

It's because I find the concept of a healer whose dps is wholly "selfish" to be a compelling one. I don't want this scrapped, I want to make it work. And so far, no one has convinced me that a selfish dps healer is impossible, just that SE has failed at it so far.

That said, if we get a new healer in 6.0 that's selfish, and WHM gets raid damage boosters, then that's cool too.

[Lyth]

It's not impossible to balance. But all things being equal, if you asked a dps or tank to choose between a healer who does high damage and a healer who hands out the equivalent amount in raid buffs, it's a complete non-contest. It's asking someone else to choose between you making yourself look better or you making them look better. And you can always choose to play support abilities selfishly, if that's your job fantasy. Why not give that big single target buff to yourself?

There's also an effort discrepancy. You can create a nice spreadsheet with all the healer oGCDs and your tanks' cooldowns mapped out against their timestamps, such that you can spend as much uptime angrily Glaring at your opponents as possible. And then your co-healer presses a button once every two minutes and gets high praise for it. Unless they have to expend an equivalent amount of uptime to get to that button press, it's not going to be an even trade-off.

I don't think that there's a problem with having variations in the amount of "support" vs. "healing/damage throughput" each job can provide. But if it's as binary as "this job brings a buff, this one doesn't", it's a complete no-brainer for your teammates. The smart solution is to give everyone varying degrees of buffs/debuffs, especially those that cannot be easily compared with each other numerically.

[ADVSS]

It's not impossible to balance. But all things being equal, if you asked a dps or tank to choose between a healer who does high damage and a healer who hands out the equivalent amount in raid buffs, it's a complete non-contest. It's asking someone else to choose between you making yourself look better or you making them look better. And you can always choose to play support abilities selfishly, if that's your job fantasy. Why not give that big single target buff to yourself?

There's also an effort discrepancy. You can create a nice spreadsheet with all the healer oGCDs and your tanks' cooldowns mapped out against their timestamps, such that you can spend as much uptime angrily Glaring at your opponents as possible. And then your co-healer presses a button once every two minutes and gets high praise for it. Unless they have to expend an equivalent amount of uptime to get to that button press, it's not going to be an even trade-off.

I don't think that there's a problem with having variations in the amount of "support" vs. "healing/damage throughput" each job can provide. But if it's as binary as "this job brings a buff, this one doesn't", it's a complete no-brainer for your teammates. The smart solution is to give everyone varying degrees of buffs/debuffs, especially those that cannot be easily compared with each other numerically.

Ironically you just gave me an idea about old 2.0 mages ballad, being toggled for some healers draining their mp slowly to give the raid big deeps... that would be interesting to see for sure

[Irenia]

It's not impossible to balance. But all things being equal, if you asked a dps or tank to choose between a healer who does high damage and a healer who hands out the equivalent amount in raid buffs, it's a complete non-contest. It's asking someone else to choose between you making yourself look better or you making them look better. And you can always choose to play support abilities selfishly, if that's your job fantasy. Why not give that big single target buff to yourself?

There's also an effort discrepancy. You can create a nice spreadsheet with all the healer oGCDs and your tanks' cooldowns mapped out against their timestamps, such that you can spend as much uptime angrily Glaring at your opponents as possible. And then your co-healer presses a button once every two minutes and gets high praise for it. Unless they have to expend an equivalent amount of uptime to get to that button press, it's not going to be an even trade-off.

I don't think that there's a problem with having variations in the amount of "support" vs. "healing/damage throughput" each job can provide. But if it's as binary as "this job brings a buff, this one doesn't", it's a complete no-brainer for your teammates. The smart solution is to give everyone varying degrees of buffs/debuffs, especially those that cannot be easily compared with each other numerically.

Interesting.

Then I would like to challenge the idea that the healer exists only for the party's sake and the role's design must focus on enhancing the enjoyment of the party. It is a class fantasy, yes, but I argue that there is design space for healers that are selfish with their dps.

EDIT: sorry, I was distracted. But as for self-buffing, that is a thing I would absolutely expect for a selfish healer. SAM has Kaiten, for example, and they are the definition of selfish DPS.

[Lyth]

Healers don't exist only for the party's sake, but other players will evaluate you based on how you benefit them. In some cases, that benefit might be because you dish out a lot of damage (relatively, mind you, as non-dps players occupy a progressively shrinking slice of the pie) while keeping everyone alive, and that's great. But progression aside, there comes a time when everyone has done the fight more than enough, and people start looking at pushing their personal performance higher. And then they look at buffs. And then comes the question: "We know you play WHM very well, but do you think you could try swapping to..." I've seen this conversation happen for five years. It will continue to happen unless you have at least something to put on the table buff-wise.

A single target buff can just as easily be applied to yourself as it can to another player. What if Bravery was an all around single target buff (i.e. Ana Nano)? Restore a set amount of HP, boost damage resistance, offensive power and skill/spell speed. Maybe you use it to save the tank who is about to die. Maybe you decide not to. You are the WHM, after all. Maybe you use it on the irritating DPS player who keeps failing an individual dps check mechanic and wiping the group. Or maybe you use it on yourself, because you're worth it. The 'job fantasy' concept doesn't need to close doors. It should open them.

[Crushnight]

Try telling SE and non healer mains that, if the healer existed outside the party they wouldn't have taken away so much and reduced all 3 healers to 1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1 etc for downtime especially for solo duties.

The game is too slow, too scripted for that to be an acceptable downtime for 80%+ for fights (100% for solo duties), healers are the only role that stagnates for so long, the 1st solo duty in ARR is handled the same way as the 5.3 solo duty, just different aesthetics, this is unacceptable imo.

All roles should be evolving their kit as they level but healers don't for half their kit, the half that does is used less and less each expansion to the point that it is a fact we as a community have even more downtime than ever before and it is happening at a lower skill level.

Whms want utility because without it they need potency buffs anytime the other 2 healers utility is even touched upon because otherwise HW and SB will repeat again, and I'm sure every Whm player would not want that for a 3rd expansion.

Whm entire gimmick of lillies can be ignored when doing solo stuff or in a competent party(I've had runs of dungeons where I pop afflatus skills when there is nothing going on between pulls, I highly doubt this is intended dev design to use instant cast heals on full hp players when nothing is happening) and unlike Sch's fairy these are all gcds so you are incentivised by the community to ignore until you have to either move for mechanics or out of cds or dead air.

Lillies system is an expansion behind where it should be, this system should've been the SB one and ShB should've improved upon it in some way.

If they want to keep whm selfish give a Lily buff for having them or give an ability for 1 Lily cost to improve Whm healing and damage at same time I.e. Faith.

Whm also has abilities that need improvement after so much nerfing, Fluid aura deserves better, repose deserved better than being taken and forced for a healer role action (I can tell you practically no one who played Sch or Ast in SB wanted repose, they had their own answers for what they needed, repose was a very lazy decision.)

Healers(especially Whms) have for a long time felt like they didn't matter to the devs, ShB only made it way more upfront and apparent. Whm is only as good now because the other two were beaten with a sledgehammer, if sch was as good as SB version, Whm would still be suffering like it had been since SB, Whm is better by proxy not by its own merit and it is the devs who are at fault, they created everything through their own ineptitude at actually understanding their own game and community.

[Irenia]

Healers don't exist only for the party's sake, but other players will evaluate you based on how you benefit them. In some cases, that benefit might be because you dish out a lot of damage (relatively, mind you, as non-dps players occupy a progressively shrinking slice of the pie) while keeping everyone alive, and that's great. But progression aside, there comes a time when everyone has done the fight more than enough, and people start looking at pushing their personal performance higher. And then they look at buffs. And then comes the question: "We know you play WHM very well, but do you think you could try swapping to..." I've seen this conversation happen for five years. It will continue to happen unless you have at least something to put on the table buff-wise.

A single target buff can just as easily be applied to yourself as it can to another player. What if Bravery was an all around single target buff (i.e. Ana Nano)? Restore a set amount of HP, boost damage resistance, offensive power and skill/spell speed. Maybe you use it to save the tank who is about to die. Maybe you decide not to. You are the WHM, after all. Maybe you use it on the irritating DPS player who keeps failing an individual dps check mechanic and wiping the group. Or maybe you use it on yourself, because you're worth it. The 'job fantasy' concept doesn't need to close doors. It should open them.

My group is kind of lower skilled, so I don't really run into that issue, but I've read that since FFLogs shifted the default DPS calculation mode, instead of the damage dealers asking for group support, the supporty classes have been asking for dps with strong personal numbers.

As for the ability to pad numbers, sure, as long as in an optimal situation the buff should be placed of the healer in question themselves for max rDPS. It'd have to basically be multiple mode skill, and placing on an ally would have to have an effect outside of damage boosting, and now I'm rambling...

[Absurdity]

There seems to be a misunderstanding about how rDPS works. If you are a selfish DPS with no group utility then you're more likely to lose dps depending on whether or not you hold your burst for buff windows. If you are a support however then whatever extra damage you provide to your DPS through buffs is counting towards your own rDPS.

So yes, you are correct that as a supporter you want jobs with high personal dps but they also need to put that personal dps inside your buff windows, whereas as a selfish dps you're better off just ignoring the buffs altogether and just cramming as many burst cooldowns into a fight as possible. As a support healer you do not want to put the dps buffs on yourself since it is never gonna give you more rDPS than putting it on an actual DPS job.

This could lead to weird situations where a big buff window is coming up in like 10 seconds but you want to use your burst right away because holding it for 10 sec means you're gonna lose a use of that cooldown throughout the fight. You're essentially doing less dps overall but your rDPS is gonna be higher.
This sounds like a bigger issue than it actually is, most jobs have their burst every 60, 120, 180 seconds which naturally lines up with buff windows...some however do not.


For speedkills on the other hand it's a completely different story, your rDPS doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is how fast you can kill the boss.

[Irenia]

I wish that FFlogs had a option to easily view player performance in three parts

1) Personal dps: damage from your damaging skills, which may or may not be augmented by any buffs you cast on yourself or debuffs you cast on an enemy.
2) Outgoing Boost: extra damage gained from your buffs and debuffs affecting party members other than yourself.
3) Incoming Boost: extra damage gained from allies' buffs and debuffs affecting your own damaging skills.

Then again, I view clear time as the 'One True Metric' and looking at your own dps is a mere estimation of your contribution that pepe seem to take too seriously.

[Deceptus]

Healers(especially Whms) have for a long time felt like they didn't matter to the devs, ShB only made it way more upfront and apparent. Whm is only as good now because the other two were beaten with a sledgehammer, if sch was as good as SB version, Whm would still be suffering like it had been since SB, Whm is better by proxy not by its own merit and it is the devs who are at fault, they created everything through their own ineptitude at actually understanding their own game and community.

This is 100% spot on. Instead of making healers better, they made then worse in ShB.