Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[Sebazy]

So yall want to do as much dps as a dps, while healing.

How about no.

This has nothing to do with the amount of damage we are doing. Adding more DPS wouldn't solve the simple fact that I press the same button 150+ times in a single savage duty. 2/3rds of my casts are me doing DPS. And no that's not some exceptional number by any stretch. There are logs of E8S clears with 220+ glare/broil/malefic casts. Would you find your DPSing enjoyable if it consisted of you mashing the same button over and over again, often with nothing more than a 30 second dot refresh to break it up?

Everquest managed to pull of a variety of interesting, varied and unique healer DPS kits well over 20 years ago with none of the budget, technical prowess, sources of inspiration or company stability and scale that SE have today.

A healer's job is primarily to heal and their toolkit is designed accordingly.

And what exactly is a healer to heal in the endgame? Savage? I spend over 2/3rds of my time doing damage with less than 1/10th of my kit. Drop down to more casual content such as 24 mans, dungeons etc and it gets considerably worse.

What is the solution? Steeper healer checks in casual content? How do you think that will go down with the casuals that struggle as it is? The only solution I see is for SE to add more depth to our downtime gameplay between heals. I literally couldn't care what route they go at this stage. Be it buffs, debuffs, feeding resources or whatever. I'm done with accepting mashing glare/broil endlessly as some kind of acceptable standard of gameplay.

[Saefinn]

And what exactly is a healer to heal in the endgame? Savage? I spend over 2/3rds of my time doing damage with less than 1/10th of my kit. Drop down to more casual content such as 24 mans, dungeons etc and it gets considerably worse.

What is the solution? Steeper healer checks in casual content? How do you think that will go down with the casuals that struggle as it is? The only solution I see is for SE to add more depth to our downtime gameplay between heals. I literally couldn't care what route they go at this stage. Be it buffs, debuffs, feeding resources or whatever. I'm done with accepting mashing glare/broil endlessly as some kind of acceptable standard of gameplay.

^ This. There are SB Normal Raids where 9/10ths of your time using 1/10th of your kit (if even that). Queuing Normal Raid roulette as a healer can be dead boring. Dungeons aren't as bad because at least you might get a tank who full pulls and you've got a bit more to do at least, but I still maybe DPS half the dungeon.

A healer's kit definitely is not designed accordingly.

A healer's kit is designed for a much higher healing requirement than we get. And I think when you are in a situation that you are pushed (EG: party failing and needs you to carry) then the toolkit melds well and because you're healing you're DPSing less, so the monotony of a Glare or Broil spam is not present.

[Kraniel]

A healer's job is primarily to heal and their toolkit is designed accordingly. A DPS' primary job is damage, hence why they get the complexe rotations and we get the vast healing repertoire with a few simple damage spell to weave in when the opprtunity presents itself. If you want complexe DPS rotation with the ability to heal and raise people on the side, try Red Mage, it's what drew me to the class initially and I loved it.

If healers get the DPS potential of ranged DPS, why would anyone play a ranged DPS ever again? They'd just be inferior to healers in every way. Healers should never get a complexe DPS rotation and I'll never understand why people want to gatekeep the healing role to the top percent of players.

If healers get this kind of potential, fights will be balanced around it and dps queue times will skyrocket because no one will want to/be able to keep up with the insane demands of the class.

If healing bores you, please just play a DPS.

Roeshel is being a bit unreasonable and unfortunately it's making you miss the actual point that the rest of us are trying to make.
I too think that if healers want a better rotation with better DPS output, then they should just play DPS.
But what the majority of us is fighting for is : balance.

Let me try to explain the thought process behind what is triggering the healer community :
1. The premisce : We love healing and support classes, most of us have played them in other MMOs and know that a good healer should make a big difference in a party
2. In FFXIV, the skill ceiling for healing is extremely low, to the point that anyone can jump into it at any time and clear endgame content (by "endgame" content i mean mainly savage/extreme) without much struggle
3. The reason this is possible is because fights are centered around knowing mechanics and have no healer checks, hence it is rarely the case that your technical ability as a healer will be challenged by the game
4. Because of this, as long as we know mechanics, our job will only be to heal through the occasional AoE damage, and DPS the rest of the time
5. However, healers only have two keys to DPS : One DoT and one direct DPS spell
6. This means that we spend most of the fight playing as a boring, dumbed-down DPS class

So what are we asking for then ?
The answer is simple :
Option 1 : Make us busy as healers. That way, we won't care if we only have two keys to DPS, since we'll actually be healing most of the time.
Option 2 : If SE is not going to put out healing skills to contribution, then we want more variety in the toolkit that we use during downtime (which represents 80~90% of the fight in most cases). It doesn't even have to be more DPS keys. It could be support buffs/debuffs as well. Just make us use our brain a bit.

As you can see, we're not asking for the best of both worlds ; just something that makes the class more fun to play. Or i understood everyone else wrongly and all healers on this forum are delusional, but i don't think that's the case

[Reiryuu]

Option 1 : Make us busy as healers. That way, we won't care if we only have two keys to DPS, since we'll actually be healing most of the time.
Option 2 : If SE is not going to put out healing skills to contribution, then we want more variety in the toolkit that we use during downtime (which represents 80~90% of the fight in most cases). It doesn't even have to be more DPS keys. It could be support buffs/debuffs as well. Just make us use our brain a bit.

The unfortunate problem is, most of the buffs, debuffs and support skills are... on the DPS classes... and in a Savage fight, etc, I wouldn't expect debuffs to really work thus not really solving the problem either unless they really change the way boss fights work... which I don't see happening either.

[Kraniel]

The unfortunate problem is, most of the buffs, debuffs and support skills are... on the DPS classes... and in a Savage fight, etc, I wouldn't expect debuffs to really work thus not really solving the problem either unless they really change the way boss fights work... which I don't see happening either.

Yep, that's where the issue lies in my opinion. They found a formula that works and brings them a lot of new players, and that formula doesn't need to worry about the healers' job (and tanks are not in a great spot either tbh).
So the only thing we can do is pray and hope that they will do something about it regardless ... But yeah, i'm not getting my hopes up. I'd be happy if we can even get back just a couple support skills that were mowed down for no reason before (Fluid Aura for WHM, Time Dilation for AST, etc ... and before people go all "acktchually" on me, i know Fluid Aura still exists, but let's be honest : it doesn't). The best thing would be a total revamp of how boss fights put each role to contribution, but i don't see that happening anytime soon.

[Lyth]

It shouldn't be too difficult to give healers a more complex rotation. There are plenty of ideas that you can steal from BLU on how to make spells interact with and combo off each other. You would need to trim out a few defensive actions to stay within the action budget, but it's definitely doable. But that's not where the contention lies.

What if the devs give you what you want, but keep your raid dps contribution unchanged from your present state? Healer dps on average will decrease, simply because there will be players who used to be able to do the old rotation in content without trouble, but aren't able to keep up with the new one. The overall distribution will become more spread out because there's a skill differential, and only the very top results will stay unchanged. Are you fine with that, or would you expect healer dps to be adjusted upwards so that the average stays unchanged?

And if you adjust healer damage output accordingly to fix the average, what do you do when the best healers starts chasing down someone like that poor DNC main who posted earlier? Have you considered the unreasonable amount of pressure that you'd be placing on DPS mains, now that they have to do more than an auto-attack only rotation to stay ahead of you? And then if all the straggler DPS quit, their eyes lined with tears, who will buy the dev team's hand painted mogstation glamours to fund SE's next IP flop? They were going to finally make Spirits Within 2. How cruel. Did you consider that?

But seriously, the elephant in the room is your raid contribution. If you wanted to make the game more challenging with no reward, there are plenty of ways to do that already. Turn your HUD off. Play in first person view. People want to see reward for their efforts, but they're either too nice or too polite to ask. "Are you saying that you want more dps?!" "N-no. I-I just want more interesting gameplay. I wouldn't dare ask for more dps. I'll work even harder for less reward. Please don't hurt me."

[NobleWinter]

Why can't tanks, healers, and dps all do the same amounts of damage? Dps can already aoe heal, use esuna, cast defensive barriers and debuffs, cast regens, revive, etc. So where is the logic in healers and tanks being weaker? Some people might actually use the Samurai and BLM logic to play support roles if they knew they could still see big numbers with them.

[Kraniel]

It shouldn't be too difficult to give healers a more complex rotation. There are plenty of ideas that you can steal from BLU on how to make spells interact with and combo off each other. You would need to trim out a few defensive actions to stay within the action budget, but it's definitely doable. But that's not where the contention lies.

What if the devs give you what you want, but keep your raid dps contribution unchanged from your present state? Healer dps on average will decrease, simply because there will be players who used to be able to do the old rotation in content without trouble, but aren't able to keep up with the new one. The overall distribution will become more spread out because there's a skill differential, and only the very top results will stay unchanged. Are you fine with that, or would you expect healer dps to be adjusted upwards so that the average stays unchanged?

And if you adjust healer damage output accordingly to fix the average, what do you do when the best healers starts chasing down someone like that poor DNC main who posted earlier? Have you considered the unreasonable amount of pressure that you'd be placing on DPS mains, now that they have to do more than an auto-attack only rotation to stay ahead of you? And then if all the straggler DPS quit, their eyes lined with tears, who will buy the dev team's hand painted mogstation glamours to fund SE's next IP flop? They were going to finally make Spirits Within 2. How cruel. Did you consider that?

But seriously, the elephant in the room is your raid contribution. If you wanted to make the game more challenging with no reward, there are plenty of ways to do that already. Turn your HUD off. Play in first person view. People want to see reward for their efforts, but they're either too nice or too polite to ask. "Are you saying that you want more dps?!" "N-no. I-I just want more interesting gameplay. I wouldn't dare ask for more dps. I'll work even harder for less reward. Please don't hurt me."

Nonono.
I'm not here to DPS.
I'm here to save some ass.

I genuinely wouldn't care about healers DPS spells if healing wasn't as basic and dumb in FFXIV, and i'm sure the majority of healers feel the same.

I want to feel drops of sweat running down my buttcheeks when i heal. I want to have to click left and right and actually have a hard time keeping people alive, and when i do i want them to go "How in hell did you manage to do this ? You're an AMAZING healer". I don't care about the sad commends that i get at the end of a dungeon because no one died when there is nothing to worry about and i can DPS through every wall-to-wall pull as long as i put a regen + barrier on the tank. I didn't sign up for healer kindergarten when i bought the game.

If i want to DPS, i'll play a DPS.
I play a healer, so i want to heal. Simple as that. Damn it give me some work SE!

[Lyth]

...

I think that this is also a reasonable direction to take things. Again, the problem comes down to being valued as a healer. You need a skill differential.

A lot of this comes down to fight design. Tightly scripted fights with unforgiving mechanics will never really be challenging for a healer in the long run. You actually need the opposite: highly variable mechanics where there is some room for recovery (and by variable, I mean variations in mechanic order, not just being randomly assigned to being Healer 1 or Healer 2 on a Gavel mechanic. You need variable damage patterns where the tank is at risk of being burst down to nothing if you blink. You need to have limited resources. It should be possible to bottom out on healing resources, such that you have no choice but to watch your team die in front of your eyes.

There is a downside to this, of course. Some healers just won't be able to clear tougher fights. And they will need to be okay with that fact.

I personally wouldn't mind trying this out. Differentiating healers on the basis of damage output is actually really safe. We know that was done well in ARR and HW, and people liked it. Differentiating healers based on their ability to carry your team through difficult mechanics hasn't really been done here, but it has been done in other games. It's just a question of whether this community would be happy with seeing their clears gated based on healer gear and skill.

I suppose there is a middle ground that I haven't really gone into, and that's if your excess resources from healing more effectively could be turned into extra dps. You'd need fights to force resource attrition, and dps would be a luxury if you healed effectively. But you'd have to be able to wipe your team if you bottom out.

Either way, things can't stay as they are now. The common theme here is that tanking and healing need to be more valuable as roles than they are now, otherwise people will swap off them to DPS. And in the absence of some major changes both to job design and fight design philosophy, I predict that's going to be a big issue in the next expansion.

[Kraniel]

I think that this is also a reasonable direction to take things. Again, the problem comes down to being valued as a healer. You need a skill differential.

A lot of this comes down to fight design. Tightly scripted fights with unforgiving mechanics will never really be challenging for a healer in the long run. You actually need the opposite: highly variable mechanics where there is some room for recovery (and by variable, I mean variations in mechanic order, not just being randomly assigned to being Healer 1 or Healer 2 on a Gavel mechanic. You need variable damage patterns where the tank is at risk of being burst down to nothing if you blink. You need to have limited resources. It should be possible to bottom out on healing resources, such that you have no choice but to watch your team die in front of your eyes.

There is a downside to this, of course. Some healers just won't be able to clear tougher fights. And they will need to be okay with that fact.

I personally wouldn't mind trying this out. Differentiating healers on the basis of damage output is actually really safe. We know that was done well in ARR and HW, and people liked it. Differentiating healers based on their ability to carry your team through difficult mechanics hasn't really been done here, but it has been done in other games. It's just a question of whether this community would be happy with seeing their clears gated based on healer gear and skill.

I suppose there is a middle ground that I haven't really gone into, and that's if your excess resources from healing more effectively could be turned into extra dps. You'd need fights to force resource attrition, and dps would be a luxury if you healed effectively. But you'd have to be able to wipe your team if you bottom out.

Either way, things can't stay as they are now. The common theme here is that tanking and healing need to be more valuable as roles than they are now, otherwise people will swap off them to DPS. And in the absence of some major changes both to job design and fight design philosophy, I predict that's going to be a big issue in the next expansion.

100% with you on this.
To be completely honest as a healer (not sure about DPS or tank here), i had more fun with extreme fights during the ARR era than with anything after SB.
I admit that the current extreme fights are very well designed/refined in their mechanics, with a nice dramatic aspect to them (a bit like an interactive movie), but as you said it just doesn't "scratch that itch" for healers and tanks.
I honestly feel more thrill grinding the current Leviathan Unreal fight with randos, than i did during any of the extreme trials/Eden savage so far. I know there isn't an obvious solution to this, as it's directly related to the vision SE have for their game, but i'm just hoping it will change someday. I want to feel like healers and tanks are more than just "filler roles" that are only required to take aggro at the beginning of the fight and heal through the occasional AoE damage.

I just want to feel alive, Lyth. I just want to feel alive ...