Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[ItMe]

Does anyone on that posts on the Healer Roles subforum actually enjoy healing

Yes, but that's more because I'm bad at it (so everything is always hectic and fun) and less because of their actual design.

[KDSilver]

This whole thread reeks of bitter paranoia.

Yeah, mostly being ignored since Heavensward but that's paranoia for sure.

Come on...

[RopeDrink]

Yes, but that's more because I'm bad at it (so everything is always hectic and fun) and less because of their actual design.

I do, and I say that with a straight face despite technically maining White Mage since ARR - arguably the most simplistic in terms of both healing and damage. My gripe rests solely on the shoulders of people I see on a daily basis who are either rooted in the belief that "I'm just here to heal", or think that doing their daily queues is a good time to watch Netflix and play like half their buttons are missing.

I'm quite literally out of a dungeon just now that went 25mins or more with a Scholar who pressed a grand total of ZERO aggressive buttons whatsoever for the entire run -- and I mean zero with no exaggeration -- which irritates me as a healer main who knows all too well just how much downtime this game gifts you, especially when the two DPS (including myself) are going all-in on the damage, avoiding all mechanics, the tank's health bar is barely moving, and every opportunity is being given to pre-emptively heal and give you more free time to do ANYTHING other than stand around drooling out the mouth while watching everyone else work while waiting for a health bar to go to 99% so you can spam overhealing. Without naming and shaming, I find it ironic how their name legitimately contained the word "Lazy" in it.

You could ask for engaging healing systems that busy the healing process, despite the fact that half of it won't be needed in casual content. You can ask for a more involved damage kit (which a tonne of players will no doubt avoid using for no good reason). You can ask for tougher content, to which you'll be told to head to Extreme/Savage/Ultimate and let the casual side be casual. Whatever way you want to feel about it, it's pointless to assume that the current state of Healers is intended as some kind of 'bridge' for the other roles to have more fun. That's not the case, even if the game may make people think it.

There's just no incentive for people to try and push beyond the basic requirement in this game, and Square have already proven that they really, really, really don't want to even remotely risk the possibility of even the most minor over-complication of what is already an excruciatingly reactive 'dance' routine, unlike WoW, which is all about sporadic reaction and chaos in the likes of Mythic+.

[Sebazy]

<snip>

Agreed, the issue here is that the overwhelming majority of group content asks so little of healers. You have to go right the way back to 2.0 and Amdapor Keep bosses to find a noteworthy DPS check in a dungeon. And whilst we've seen a few more HPS checks on certain big pulls, they are still far and few between, not to mention random and erratic enough that it's understandable if it spooks a new healer that likely had no idea that a difficulty spike was about to run them over. Why does the first pull in a completely random and innocuous looking dungeon hit harder than almost any dungeon boss in the game? It's absolutely laughable.

It's no surprise that new healers hit the end game with literally no idea of what to expect or what the game is about to ask of them once they move up to Extremes unless they've been watching guides or speaking with peers. 2.0 did an excellent job of using dungeons to prepare people for the endgame. But they've turned into HP sponges pretty much ever since Pharos got nerfed hard.

With regards to adding more engaging gameplay for healers. It still absolutely boggles my mind to this day that SE didn't take AST and give it the ability to feed it's potency into someone (or something) else rather than nuke directly. Generate cards with GCDs. Add some diminishing returns on the card buffs so the AST can't just autopilot everything on one person. Experiment switching to flat potency rather than percentages, perhaps even a mix of the two to spice things up. Allow them to throw cards at Earthly Star for AoE buffs to add more depth. There's so many novel directions SE could go with this.

But instead we get 1 nuke, 1 dot.

[shao32]

As a tank i can couln't say we only exist as a minnor complementary DPS experience but i can say right now both roles exist in this oversimplifed mindless gameplay experience so DPS players can casually pick our jobs and chill out on the roles with the minimun effort in order to bring more players on it even at the expense of the gameplay value veterans and invested players use to have and i personally hate the current state of our roles.
I have nothing against DPS players but i hate how for the dev team there is absolute nothing but what the DPS players need and leave us in this eternal limbo of trial and error where they only care to try to fix stuff 1 time every 2 years by usually trying to solve problems by creating a new one worse.

[Reiryuu]

As a tank i can couln't say we only exist as a minnor complementary DPS experience but i can say right now both roles exist in this oversimplifed mindless gameplay experience

Sorry, what? Tanks are over simplified? Try being reduced to 1 single attack, a dot, an AoE attack and 20 buttons just like rampart, then we'll talk about tanks being oversimplified.

[nalgene]

Yes, but that's more because I'm bad at it (so everything is always hectic and fun) and less because of their actual design.

I think this is also me. I've only ever DPSd since 2.0, but lately I've enjoyed healing because, at least for the content I play (PF and roulettes, no static or FC) it's a relatively dynamic all the time. I guess if you play with competent players all the time and people aren't making mistakes and your healing comes down to healing during set / expected periods of encounters I could see it being boring.

But yeah I do actually enjoy the more random nature of healing over dps rotations, even if that randomness results in simply clicking a party list name and pressing a heal.

[Recon1o6]

Sorry, what? Tanks are over simplified? Try being reduced to 1 single attack, a dot, an AoE attack and 20 buttons just like rampart, then we'll talk about tanks being oversimplified.

They are, just not to the same degree as healers. Which goes to show just how awful healers currently are when the tanks are in such a poor state

Tanks even have an equivalent of the whm/ast situation with dark and warrior.

Cut the non gnb tanks some slack, they are on an identical boat, they just haven't been sailing as long yet

[Calysto]

Sorry, what? Tanks are over simplified? Try being reduced to 1 single attack, a dot, an AoE attack and 20 buttons just like rampart, then we'll talk about tanks being oversimplified.

To be fair, tanks got dumbed down too with le removal of enemity management and simplification of their rotations.

But i agree with you : right now tanks are in a spot of "basic dps" that choose to be "in charge" gameplay-wise.
Their kit is some dps rotation complemented with tanking tools.
And the dps rotation isn't even that "basic" either :
-gnb got dual rotation every so often
-war got kinda branching path ? (given it was better than that at some point)
-pld got magical kinda path and utility ? (i don't really play pld)
-drk got ogcd weave and kinda ressource managment

The point was not to bash on tanks for complaining ; like a said they also got hit with the homogenization and lost a part of their kit.
The point is that SE was able to give them a kit that was kinda on par with dps instead of what healers got.

[RopeDrink]

Agreed, the issue here is that the overwhelming majority of group content asks so little of healers. You have to go right the way back to 2.0 and Amdapor Keep bosses to find a noteworthy DPS check in a dungeon. And whilst we've seen a few more HPS checks on certain big pulls, they are still far and few between, not to mention random and erratic enough that it's understandable if it spooks a new healer that likely had no idea that a difficulty spike was about to run them over. Why does the first pull in a completely random and innocuous looking dungeon hit harder than almost any dungeon boss in the game? It's absolutely laughable.

It's no surprise that new healers hit the end game with literally no idea of what to expect or what the game is about to ask of them once they move up to Extremes unless they've been watching guides or speaking with peers. 2.0 did an excellent job of using dungeons to prepare people for the endgame. But they've turned into HP sponges pretty much ever since Pharos got nerfed hard.

With regards to adding more engaging gameplay for healers. It still absolutely boggles my mind to this day that SE didn't take AST and give it the ability to feed it's potency into someone (or something) else rather than nuke directly. Generate cards with GCDs. Add some diminishing returns on the card buffs so the AST can't just autopilot everything on one person. Experiment switching to flat potency rather than percentages, perhaps even a mix of the two to spice things up. Allow them to throw cards at Earthly Star for AoE buffs to add more depth. There's so many novel directions SE could go with this.

But instead we get 1 nuke, 1 dot.

I'm one of the few who enjoyed Cleric Stance because it emphasized the need to differentiate between downtime and healing requirement, often showing who knew fights like the back of their hand and who was uncomfortable in their role, and could offer the odd heart-skip to keep you awake (despite orbiting around reactive moments in the game, eg. a DPS eating an otherwise avoidable mechanic). Alas, this just compounds the present-day problem -- because if we still had Cleric Stance, the unincentivized simply wouldn't use it, and I recall a lot of them using it as a beat-stick to justify their lack of desire to press an aggressive button.

As such, it was eventually removed, and the simplification continued, with nothing being added in return to counter-balance it. I tried AST - back when it actually had the mini-game of card management, which has since turned into all cards doing the exact same thing. I remember when each Scholar pet was unique in their own way and could even be targeted, much like Hunter pets in WoW, which are now basically background noise beyond having to summon one before you start your duty. White Mage was the one that constantly remained in a very similar place, even when the Lily system was added, which is simply fuel towards an occasional AoE nuke to replace the lack of second DoT.

Again, I'm one of the few who enjoy healing even in this state (as my fun doesn't rotate around how the Healer actually functions), but I can see why people complain, and I have no hope of this changing overmuch for the foreseeable future due to the very one-directional way Square has handled it for the past few years -- but I would be happy if they at least started to incentivize pushing beyond the basic requirement. Thus far, the only thing telling new players that they should occasionally do a little damage during downtime is a bit of dialogue during the Adventurer's Guild role-trials at the start of the game which nobody actually does unless they want the "Brand New" gear.

EDIT:
Bear in mind that me saying I liked CS doesn't imply I think it was good or that it should come back.