Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[Roeshel]

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The discussion is about GMs not paying enough attention to healers and tanks. The fact of the matter is, no matter how poor the gameplay is for those two roles, they are always going to be more valuable than a dps job in-game. The value comes from the role itself and its place in the game.

Healers in this game have been given the opportunity to correct stupid and blatant mistakes. It is more or less a consequence of a bad player base in general. In any case, I went through FFlogs to check historically how much dps were the healers doing. The top SCH was not out-dpsing the top bard even in Heavensward. They had like 5 different DoTs, healed almost nothing, and still couldn't deal more than a dps that's playing properly. Back then they didn't have rDPS so we can't really check the real raid-contributing dps of a player. As far as I know, bards have raid-wide buffs so the DPS value that is seen is not really the correct one.

Right now in terms of rDPS, healers can achieve around 60-70% of a dps' max rDPS output. For the Oracle of Darkness, the strongest healer (AST) has dealt 64% of the rDPS of the strongest DPS job (Black Mage) and 73% of the rDPS of the weakest DPS job (Machinist).

Healers' dps is not negligible at all. We are achieving that amount of DPS with a 2-button rotation. Obviously, we are a little bit more complex than that. And I think we should be even more complex and allowed to reach 100% of the rDPS of the strongest DPS when we play perfectly well which should be next to impossible but still possible. The skill ceiling needs to be raised.

[Lyth]

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Sure. You need tanks and healers to queue in, and their population numbers are smaller than DPS. That makes them a "valuable commodity". But most people want to be more than just a warm body. I'm talking about being valuable in the sense that people respect your skill as a player on the job. That only happens when there's a skill differential, which is what you're asking for here.

You can really only correct mistakes to a point. For a lot of mistakes, the penalty is either less damage, or player death, which also translates into a damage loss. And in the latter case, raises are so ubiquitous and you don't even need to be a healer to perform one. And I suppose that's where part of the problem exists. Because raises are trivial, it's an expected outcome. It's not precious: this is not a 'once every ten minutes' battle raise. There's nothing to celebrate; everyone knows that you've lost raid damage because of the death and the damage is done. The raise is merely the inevitable follow-up event that nobody bats an eyelid at unless you somehow mess it up.

While you won't surpass a the very best DPS players in terms of damage output while on a support role (as should be the case, or else we'd run only tanks and healers), there definitely was a lot more overlap in earlier expansions than there is now, even when comparing at relatively skilled players. Actually, if you want to look at a time before raid buffs were so prevalent, in late ARR some of the best players at the time got together and scribed in their abacus totals on a mottled excel spreadsheet that's still floating around the internet, if you know where to look. And there definitely was a lot more overlap then than there is now. Which is hardly difficult, given that there is none.

I think for long term satisfaction, you need to see some degree of personal growth as a player. That in turn requires a meaningful skill differential that impacts your team's performance. A novice player should see someone more skilled and want to put in the hours of practice to become that player. That could involve having more dps complexity for tanks and healers which translates into a significant raid impact. The dev team is not at all interested in this, and the STR accessory fiasco in Stormblood should have clued people into this if they weren't already aware. Tanks are there to take damage. Healers are there to heal damage. Yay.

Working under this constraint, you have to suggest something that allows you to be challenged and allows for a skill differential in the role. For tanks, I think that could come out of allowing more control over boss positioning and movement. For healers, I think that could come out of having greater variability in fight damage patterns, unpredictable damage spikes, and more challenging resource management, but I don't see any simple solutions here. Well, aside from the obvious, which is swapping to DPS. Hey, did you know that they'll be doing a media tour/live letter on Reaper, the new healer job? Looking forward to it!

[Roeshel]

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I think that the difference between a skilled healer and a novice is very apparent especially on large mob pulls which is the most common game encounter. This is the instance where a skilled healer will constantly put out the same amount of dps if not more than their dps party members while healing the tank that is tanking 10 mobs. I find it hard to do that with AST though, so I usually don't pick it for dungeons. For raids and trials, it is not that obvious because there are more people and there is a 2nd healer.

I do not consider it as fun having a complex DPS rotation that at max level of gameplay would lead you to have only a portion of what a max DPS job can do. It is better to have a simple but weaker rotation than to have a complex but also weaker rotation. It would feel unfair to be putting an extra amount of effort into maintaining your rotation because you also have to heal, and still do less than a DPS player.

[Truen]

I do not consider it as fun having a complex DPS rotation that at max level of gameplay would lead you to have only a portion of what a max DPS job can do. It is better to have a simple but weaker rotation than to have a complex but also weaker rotation. It would feel unfair to be putting an extra amount of effort into maintaining your rotation because you also have to heal, and still do less than a DPS player.

Healing is work, it's basically a community service if nothing else. We should have interesting and dynamic dps options while facilitating gameplay for our groups. Players that are 'good' and can min/max their class should be able to show out with their ability to effectively weave damage while also healing. That balancing act has historically always been what made healing interesting.

5.0 healing just sucks so bad. Don't even get me started on how mundane questing and farming are either...how many damn times can a person spam "Broil," "Glare," etc before it becomes excessive? That's literally ALL we do outside of duty finder.