Could a "fully offensive healer" work in FFXIV?

[PondHollow]

Full on offensive healer would become mandatory, much like disc priests and holy paladins are in WoW.

They're taken because they put out good healing AND damage to beat enrage timers in cutting edge guilds.

I'd rather not see that here.

It would be a good thing precisely because the non-dps healers would effectively deleted, and hopefully then reworked to become full dps healers.

Scholar used to have an easy-but-not-too-boring rotation up through Heavensward, typically around 7 buttons in single target fights, which was whittled away in Stormblood and then yanked out altogether in Shadowbringers, for an up to 3 button rotation now in single target fights. As the healers have gradually become more boring, there are more people now who don't DPS at all, because that is what the developers are encouraging, and I can't blame the players.

A significant challenge fully offensive healer design would face is a large amount of untargetable-boss periods where it's expected that you heal or shield up.

[Jeeqbit]

Healing through damage can work because white mages do that with Assize and astrologians do it with Earthly Star.

Because the fights are mostly scripted and the incoming damage isn't usually constant, it makes more sense that you are dealing damage all of the time and just weave in your heals when there is some scripted damage.

[Imora]

It would be a good thing precisely because the non-dps healers would effectively deleted, and hopefully then reworked to become full dps healers.

Scholar used to have an easy-but-not-too-boring rotation up through Heavensward, typically around 7 buttons in single target fights, which was whittled away in Stormblood and then yanked out altogether in Shadowbringers, for an up to 3 button rotation now in single target fights. As the healers have gradually become more boring, there are more people now who don't DPS at all, because that is what the developers are encouraging, and I can't blame the players.

A significant challenge fully offensive healer design would face is a large amount of untargetable-boss periods where it's expected that you heal or shield up.

Not everyone wants to play a dps healer.

I know I kinda like healing with a side of DPS, not a green mage.

[Sebazy]

Not everyone wants to play a dps healer.

I know I kinda like healing with a side of DPS, not a green mage.

This is a fair enough view, the issue is that the game just doesn't support this mentality unless you're spending large swathes of time stood doing nothing. Our kits are too healing heavy vs basically anything outside of Ultimate prog.

IMHO the solution here isn't just more of a DPS focus within healer kits, but rather a split of selfish dps healers vs buffing/debuffing healers that are effectively just dropping their potency on someone else.

Again, literally anything is better than sitting there pressing the same single button over and over again for 30 seconds at a time. That is not remotely compelling gameplay by any stretch of the word.

[Kes13a]

problem with dps healers is then you have people using them for the queue times and not because they can actually heal properly.

unfortunately, there isnt much of a happy medium

[Larirawiel]

Sounds like WoW classic facemelt0r aka shadow priest. The problem is such class should never be capable to be a full healer because it will be a replacement for other healers and other dps.


Cheers

[Endariel]

Here's an idea
Remove healers completely and rework jobs so they have their own way to mitigate damage / heal.
Big brain time

[Kes13a]

Here's an idea
Remove healers completely and rework jobs so they have their own way to mitigate damage / heal.
Big brain time

hmmm, so remove my mains...

yeah, I would have to disagree with that just a little bit.

[Nothv13]

Warhammer Online's Warrior priest is the one that I bring up when this kind of discussion arrises. Using melee attacks to generate charges for it's OGCD/Insta toolkit whilst also having basic but time inefficient heals to fall back onto when needed as well. It'd be something that would be simpler to tune than purely generating healing auras through DPS.

At this point in time I'm honestly fine with SE trying absolutely anything vaguely bold and fresh with healers though. I really don't care what it is. A move towards buffing, debuffing, disc priest style healing auras, utility through dps. I just want SE's devs to try something so I'm not facing another expansion with a nigh 10 to 1 ratio of Glare vs anything else even in Savage content.

The current state of healer gameplay is laughable at best. Can you imagine the uproar if a new DPS job got added that pressed 1 button 200+ times in a Savage encounter with the second place ability coming in at under 30 presses?

The warrior priest style is the only way I could see it working and not straight breaking the current healers (I was originally hoping this is what the Dancer would have been before it was made a DPS). Though it wouldn't really fit with what the OP wants as you still had to target party and enemies and couldn't just zone straight into just bashing the baddie.

[Naoki34]

Could a "fully offensive healer" work in FFXIV?

Yoshi-P said that healers don't have to dps, and since people were bothering those who didn't want to dps, well, they only have a dot, a monocible spell and an aoe.

Meditated on that.