Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[Reiryuu]

The concept of healers only healing is contrary to absolutely everything in this game and anyone who has said "healers only heal" must have been joking.

And yet, look at the progression of healing tool kits. Buffs removed, DoTs removed, abilities to heal and to bolster healing increased. We can't ask the dev team what fueled these changes or ideas and no one who has ever interviewed Yoshi P or the dev team dares to even ask questions about healers, so we never get to know and the dev team is never really challenged in that regard. Even if it may not have been implicitly said, the changes in healers in recent expansions certainly imply it. The Healer Hall of the Novice trials also heavily implies it.

Why do we have DPS and DoTs? For soloing and main questing. That's something I am pretty sure you can find Yoshi P saying somewhere. The thing is, people on this forum and in this thread want healing requirements increased. That's fine and all, but the problem with that, hence the post I quoted, is that trials are not a war of attrition. They're a battle against time. As I mention in my post, even if you manage your resources to the fullest and keep all the dps alive, that doesn't mean the boss is going to die. You can still hit enrage. This is a fundamental problem and flaw with healer design, FFXIV's concept of healers, and boss encounter design. One of these things has to give and the devs cling to all of them.

The devs have really pushed healers into a closet from their own design concepts. We're kind of doomed not to get any more interesting kits until we're either let out of the closet or some of the walls are broken down.

[Jirah]

in some cases DPS arent having fun either, dungeons you hardly matter but then again dungeons arent meant to be fun, to quote some bloke off of redit

[HermitOwl]

I'm a new player that's been playing FFXIV for about a month and a half, but I'd like to put in my 2 cents.
I like that it's not overly complex, it frees my little scrub mind to focus on mechanics and the looks of the boss and the fight and at the same time allows me to be ready to heal when I need to while mindlessly pressing my 2 dps buttons. But I understand that people who have played FFXIV for a long time and have everything down to a tee and have gone through all the iterations over the years to feel frustration.
It's not a simple issue with a simple solution, but there at least needs to be the option to have a more complex playstyle since quite a many players want that while not overcorrecting and making all healers too complex for the people who wants a simpler playstyle and making it too unfriendly to new players.

[Mortex]

in some cases DPS arent having fun either, dungeons you hardly matter but then again dungeons arent meant to be fun, to quote some bloke off of redit

Oh pls as a meele you can tank a entire group for the time bloodbath is up. Also your dps decides if the bad geared tank dies after his cds run out or the bad geared healer is oom then before all mobs are death. Also some aoe rotation do require a little bit of skill. Healer have one button and maybe don’t even aoe when you have a paper tank or a healbot.

[Mortex]

I'm a new player that's been playing FFXIV for about a month and a half, but I'd like to put in my 2 cents.
I like that it's not overly complex, it frees my little scrub mind to focus on mechanics and the looks of the boss and the fight and at the same time allows me to be ready to heal when I need to while mindlessly pressing my 2 dps buttons. But I understand that people who have played FFXIV for a long time and have everything down to a tee and have gone through all the iterations over the years to feel frustration.
It's not a simple issue with a simple solution, but there at least needs to be the option to have a more complex playstyle since quite a many players want that while not overcorrecting and making all healers too complex for the people who wants a simpler playstyle and making it too unfriendly to new players.

The problem is we do understand that if you start the job here it should start slow and teach you job fundamentals. The problem you only having 2 dps button makes me even the solo lvl stand out badly. Also end game skill ceiling isn’t there because the not ultimates or week 1 raids are mostly so easy too heal you fall asleep

[AikenDrum]

do we also need a 2 button tank and dps jobs to be friendly to new players and allow them to focus on mechanics and damage mitigation?
i dont see what's so special about healers that they need one and not everyone else

[Mortex]

do we also need a 2 button tank and dps jobs to be friendly to new players and allow them to focus on mechanics and damage mitigation?
i dont see what's so special about healers that they need one and not everyone else

Can’t wait for them too take the last 2 dps spells away or disable them in raid content so you don’t exclude healer that doesn’t do dmg at all. I mean it’s not like you can get reported for telling them that. Oh wait …….

[Roeshel]

And yet, look at the progression of healing tool kits. Buffs removed, DoTs removed, abilities to heal and to bolster healing increased. We can't ask the dev team what fueled these changes or ideas and no one who has ever interviewed Yoshi P or the dev team dares to even ask questions about healers, so we never get to know and the dev team is never really challenged in that regard. Even if it may not have been implicitly said, the changes in healers in recent expansions certainly imply it. The Healer Hall of the Novice trials also heavily implies it.

Why do we have DPS and DoTs? For soloing and main questing. That's something I am pretty sure you can find Yoshi P saying somewhere. The thing is, people on this forum and in this thread want healing requirements increased. That's fine and all, but the problem with that, hence the post I quoted, is that trials are not a war of attrition. They're a battle against time. As I mention in my post, even if you manage your resources to the fullest and keep all the dps alive, that doesn't mean the boss is going to die. You can still hit enrage. This is a fundamental problem and flaw with healer design, FFXIV's concept of healers, and boss encounter design. One of these things has to give and the devs cling to all of them.

The devs have really pushed healers into a closet from their own design concepts. We're kind of doomed not to get any more interesting kits until we're either let out of the closet or some of the walls are broken down.

Here is a historical overview of AST:

HS:
DPS skills:
Malefic II - 200 damage potency - AST's main damage output at level cap
Combust I & Combust II - DoTs
Stella - useless utility spell on GCD with 100 potency - 2,5 cast time
Gravity - 200 dmg potency to first then 10/20/30/40/50% reduced damage for the next targets. 3s cast time. - Gravity back then was in awful condition, can't weave while casting, can't move in between casts, and on big mob packs, you deal 100 damage potency to the majority of mobs every 3s. The skill stayed in this wretched state for 4 whole years until Shadowbringers came - the expansion that allegedly destroyed AST

Back then all healers had cleric stance. An ability that goes against the concept of healers healing while doing damage. It most probably affected ticking regens as well. I don't want to imagine the mess it caused. You had to stop DPSing just to heal. This type of playstyle is akin only to WHM and it's one of the major issues with the job currently.
For some reason, everybody had access to Aero during HS. An ability that thematically suits only WHM. It had the same potency as Malefic II so unless they wanted to move or weave, they wouldn't use the spell.

SB:
Malefic III
Combust II
Gravity
Earthly Star

Basically Shb AST with old card system with probably serious clip problems and terrible AoE. The only time when you can weave is when you reset DoT. Lightspeed decreased your damage output so it is not something you would want to use to deal damage.

Fast forward two years and now we have the actual quality of life changes for the better. The whole card system is revamped so that you don't have to fish for balance, you can weave with every cast, your AoE is not sluggish and weak, LS is not working against you. Your skills support the playstyle that is expected of you which is to DPS all of the time without clipping. In the previous expansions, you didn't even have that. Not to mention that AST up until Shb had no access to AoE for any content in ARR. Their AoE was available at level 52. I would have probably never queued for leveling roulette. Can you imagine? Running Keeper of the Lake and not being able to AoE anything. The suffering must have been unfathomable. What else can you do besides AoE-ing? Circle your unspreadable DoTs? Give me a break. That gameplay was terrible.

Looking back at AST and the changes made it becomes clear that the GMs are trying to optimize your gameplay for DPSing. The gameplay of AST today is the most fluid version we ever had.

For AST, there was only one unique and offensive spell that got removed - Stella. It being a GCD made it a completely pointless ability to have. Turning it into oGCD would have made it into Fluid Aura with a different pointless utility but it would have still been used because of the DPS. It being removed is better than staying the way it is. It is a poorly designed spell.

It is not completely accurate to say that DoTs were removed for AST. They were simply organized. You don't need Combust ∞ on your bar. As far as Aero is concerned it should have never been part of AST's kit, to begin with.

From what I remember when I was doing the Hall of Novice you are advised to attack when there is nothing to heal which is more or less the old method of healing when healers still had Cleric Stance which made DPSing and healing at the same time as healer difficult. It used to swap MND and INT stats during HS so you must have been healing nothing when it was active. This also means that INT was not an attribute used by magical DPS only but by healers as well which makes healers unnecessary complicated and unable to deal significant damage unless their Cleric Stance is on. I wonder how they were building their BiS back then if healer's gear also had INT stats.

[IceBlueNinja]

IWhile I love the ast now and agree. the current card system is as boring as the one button dot and dps spell we have. This system is worst then stormblood cards no matter how nitche some of the cards where it at least felt more to really keep an ast on their toes as they were made to be unique of buffing the party and not dps compared to a sch or whm. i was the rare ast that didnt only go for balance fishing when I found use for all card cept spire when tp was gone. Sb cards are way more annoying for this weak water down 5 dps damage increase vs royal road that gave least half of all card effect to all party. remember spear? ast was the only job that gave a crit buff and if it was aoe was crit 5% to all party which wouldnt crit be better than 5% flat damage? The nerves to make our cards only 1 person now buff. even royal balance was 5% for all party instead of single. Am I the only one to see we actually was cheated of our cards? divination is just poor buff bad cd and too much to get it. oh i love using a card early b4 fight only for seal not to apply(not)

Overall even if devs change healers there always gonna be a group of never satisfied people. it always gonna be in this way in this or any game. I just accept lately on any game to accept game what it be like it or not or move on to new things or respect it.

[Sebazy]

I'm a new player that's been playing FFXIV for about a month and a half, but I'd like to put in my 2 cents.
I like that it's not overly complex, it frees my little scrub mind to focus on mechanics and the looks of the boss and the fight and at the same time allows me to be ready to heal when I need to while mindlessly pressing my 2 dps buttons.

The solution to this side of the issue is to simply use the different healer jobs within the role to offer a variety of play styles.

WHM has always been the straight forward, no frills healer. That's fine.

SCH was originally the healer with less brute force power on the surface, but it's strength was in it's subtleties and depth.

AST was the buffing healer and IMHO SE should have taken it even further down that road with a greater emphasis on cards and buffs vs personal nuking.

The unfortunate fact is that it takes a significant amount of time to balance jobs that are this diverse. Time that SE have demonstrated time and time again that they are not willing to invest in the healer role.