It's time to kill the argument that DPS abilities keep healers from healing.

[ssunny2008]

You're still accountable, and no one is forcing you play a healer in braindead content. If you were tanking and your healer just let you die, and their excuse was, "Sorry, healing is so boring and I got caught up in Netflix." what would be your reaction? While you might be more understanding, I'm pretty sure you would still know that your healer is at fault for your KO.

Another thing I will point out is that the tank and DPS members in your group are most definitely not looking at Netflix while in a duty, and while they have less reason to be than a bored to tears healer spamming one button, it is just good etiquette and shows respect giving them the same courtesy. And yes, I am aware that negligent people exist playing all roles in the game. Their lack of attentiveness and care does not pardon your own.

You miss my point. Ofc it´s my fault as healer, when the tank is doing everything correct but still dies. I´m not here for excuses.

My statement is, that the game itself doesn´t force anything from me in this way and there are more than enough players out there who never really focus in content out of savage. (Yes even casuals.)

- Healers spam one button 95% of all time yes. It´s either aoe into adds or that 1 cast into bosses. In case of SCH you need even less heals thx to the fairy.
- Tanks on the other hand run to the front and spam aoe or 123, 123, 123. They can even facetank any bossmechanics easily. Not even a tankbuster hurts as it should be.
- DPS do pretty much the same, aoe or 123, but they´ve atleast a handful more ogcd´s, bursts or positionals to care about. (But sadly those are more optional than needed.)

If we wouldn´t sit on wall to wall bangs with one button spam, we would focus more. If a boss would kill a tank within 5s without a heal, we would focus more. If we wouldn´t be able to ignore pretty much every mechanic in non-savage content, we would focus more. If we wouldn´t get downsynced with way too much stats, we would focus more. Or if bosses would hit an enrage, we would focus more. (Imo i can only remember that the Amaurot endboss has a limit with his platforms. But even there i´ve solod this guy lately as DRK with my little selfheal and blackest night into the laser, while my party was dead and watching 5mins.)

That´s the point i want to clarify and it´s up to SE to cater us with more interesting content and gameplay, which force more than just this one button + a fairy, benediction or a hot.

EDIT: I´m pretty sure, that nobody would complain about too less damage skills, if we would need more stuff to heal. But if we don´t have anything to heal, which is mostly the case, one button spam is no gameplay.

[Grimoire-M]

EDIT: I´m pretty sure, that nobody would complain about too less damage skills, if we would need more stuff to heal. But if we don´t have anything to heal, which is mostly the case, one button spam is no gameplay.

Have to disagree here, for two reasons, both of which are design constraints SE has imposed on themselves. The first, is healing difficulty in fights. On that front SE literally stated they're not changing their fight design to add more to that. As they themselves can't handle the healing checks. With that constraint in mind, getting to full on DPS is not only a reward for learning to heal well, but ultimately necessary for engagement, even if the developers themselves do not tune around it. Doesn't matter if it's Ultimate or MSQ, it's the glue that keeps us entertained. Recognizing its place on the skill curve and why that's the case is just as important.

The other constraint, which I hope is obvious, is that SE doesn't want to embrace healing rotations. Attrition Healing MMOs have elements of the same buff management that DPS have here in XIV, but even from ARR you can see how SE steadfastly avoids that exact design on healers in particular. Most healing actions, whether spells or abilities, are one and done. Very few are actual buffs (most of them having been trimmed because SE didn't like Critlo cheese), and many are in the form of direct potency increases, rather than percentage boosts (thereby preventing multiplicative stacking). The only thing they're half willing to give healers is some level of resource manipulation, mostly in the form of cooldown management. Scholar, despite its high points in this regard, is mostly constrained by the aetherflow timer, which dictates a majority of their otherwise more flexible kit. White Mage only has Lilies. AST has cards, which doesn't even touch on their healing kit most of the time.

That said, accounting for some level of skill-gap with a depth curve is absolutely necessary, no matter what that takes. In my opinion, DPS rotations are necessary for everyone but AST (whose card kit fits this bill, but could be fleshed out further), and adding another legitimate resource to manipulate would go a long way on WHM in particular. Lilies ain't gonna cut it forever.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

I agree. Spamming broil is a reward at end game content, not a given. You have to get good enough to heal that less.

[Dogempire]

What do you mean kill it? I see healers tunnel visioning and leaving peeps on the floor all the time while they continue to DPS. Many tanks mains will tell you about where the healer just let them die. They used their cool downs properly, even went into invuln, and they just drop; then the healer will SC raise them when the mob starts eating their face.
I'm all on board with making healing fun and engaging. However, some arguments about their DPS is sorely misplaced, and I also think just giving them some additional DPS buttons to press won't solve anything. We're talking 3.x gameplay mam, which was years ago. The game has evolved past those days, and healers need actual mechanics with how their job plays; not go from 1,1,1,1 to 1,2,3,4. All this does for healers is give them more animations to look at while doing the same damage they are doing now.
No, no. I've seen too many cool reworks happen to MCH, PLD, SMN, and NIN to find just going back to 3.x or 4.x SCH anywhere near acceptable.

The only time healing is actually remotely fun is in Bozja where the lost actions that eat at your mp pretty hard actually mix up the boring gameplay some, and that's only really because you're doing a lot of damage.

It would actually be kind of nice to see healers get MP dump skills that increase damage and then other skills that help with recovering from the MP dump skills, but pretty sure that would never happen because it's not very sprout friendly

[BooPoo]

Have to disagree here, for two reasons, both of which are design constraints SE has imposed on themselves. The first, is healing difficulty in fights. On that front SE literally stated they're not changing their fight design to add more to that. As they themselves can't handle the healing checks. With that constraint in mind, getting to full on DPS is not only a reward for learning to heal well, but ultimately necessary for engagement, even if the developers themselves do not tune around it. Doesn't matter if it's Ultimate or MSQ, it's the glue that keeps us entertained. Recognizing its place on the skill curve and why that's the case is just as important.

The other constraint, which I hope is obvious, is that SE doesn't want to embrace healing rotations. Attrition Healing MMOs have elements of the same buff management that DPS have here in XIV, but even from ARR you can see how SE steadfastly avoids that exact design on healers in particular. Most healing actions, whether spells or abilities, are one and done. Very few are actual buffs (most of them having been trimmed because SE didn't like Critlo cheese), and many are in the form of direct potency increases, rather than percentage boosts (thereby preventing multiplicative stacking). The only thing they're half willing to give healers is some level of resource manipulation, mostly in the form of cooldown management. Scholar, despite its high points in this regard, is mostly constrained by the aetherflow timer, which dictates a majority of their otherwise more flexible kit. White Mage only has Lilies. AST has cards, which doesn't even touch on their healing kit most of the time.

That said, accounting for some level of skill-gap with a depth curve is absolutely necessary, no matter what that takes. In my opinion, DPS rotations are necessary for everyone but AST (whose card kit fits this bill, but could be fleshed out further), and adding another legitimate resource to manipulate would go a long way on WHM in particular. Lilies ain't gonna cut it forever.

+1

Hate spending all of my time healing in WoW. A 50/50 hybrid with semi DPS rotation and on demand healing is WAYYYY more enjoyable.

[Shurrikhan]

+1

Hate spending all of my time healing in WoW. A 50/50 hybrid with semi DPS rotation and on demand healing is WAYYYY more enjoyable.

To be fair, you should still be doing a fair amount of damage as a healer, even in M+.

Heck, that's the very reason Holy Paladin has so often been meta.

But yes, having some healing-downtime depth would be much appreciated.

[ssunny2008]

I agree. Spamming broil is a reward at end game content, not a given. You have to get good enough to heal that less.

The first, is healing difficulty in fights. "is not only a reward for learning to heal well"

I really can´t follow you guys here. Healing isn´t hard to master and it depends more on the whole group than yourself to git gud at it. If noone fails the mechs permanently, you´re able to use that aoe heal or even just an ogcd and continue with 1. But if someone fails, those guys are mostly dead or cause a wipe anyway. If we talk about dungeons instead of savage, you´ve that fairy or regen effects. In stuff like E11s / E12s endphases, it depends more on the group medigation to survive.

The other constraint, which I hope is obvious, is that SE doesn't want to embrace healing rotations.

There are already healing rotations, even if you can variate slightly with them. Boss fights will always be the same timing-wise and healer prepare for that. "Oh that aoe is coming next, let´s plant a star." or "The next hit won´t hurt that hard, regen is enough." or "Tank will invul the tankbuster... Benediction! ,unless it´s a PLD. You repeat this again and again, maybe even someone dies because you´ve been to greedy for more DPS and that poor caster died, because he didn´t recieved that critheal on the aoe, who knows.


That said, healing isn´t so hard and i can´t see any reward by spamming 1. If you don´t have to heal and perform your rotation, you´ve a good group. If you can´t do that, your group will mostly suck and you need to react on the given circumstances. But in this kind, the group should become better and the healer shouldn´t carry them with LB3 or something again and again.
The content doesn´t force interactive gameplay on healers. Things don´t change immediately in a fight unless someone fcks up, not because some random encounters, hits or debuffs are getting spread by the boss. Ppl just optimize their healing rotation to get more damage out of it. Stuff like assise or the star is even used on cd for more damage instead of heal. But most of the time it does even match some boss aoe thx to SE´s encounter design.

If your group have better gear, it´s the same. You´ll heal more with more stats and they´ll get less damage. Just 2 day ago i had a tank with white level ~35 gear in aurum vale. He was experienced, but died to 2 adds just because of no stats. My fairy and shieldspam did the job, but well... i just spammed 1 heal button. In the 2nd run i got an experienced tank with equip. Eos did everything solo this time, so i was able to spam dps.

Another thing is, that the most healers either don´t know about Esuna or just don´t use it, because they would lose DPS. And the sad thing about this is, that the game pretty much never force its use.

At the end you´ve lucid dreaming... just hold it on cd and you´ll be fine with your mana.


I don´t know... for me it´s not hard to be healer in any content and i don´t feel rewarded if i´ve optimized my rotation or the group the medigation. I just press 1 more or less and this is based on other things, but not if i´m good enough or not. The only gap between good / bad healers is shown when things go down under. The decision - making makes the difference in such cases, sometimes even just a lucky heal crit.

[Alien_Gamer]

And yet, DPSing does seem to prevent healers from healing. It doesn't take much effort to find stories about party wipes because healers refused to heal while they were DPSing; the Tales from the Duty Finder thread usually has a story about it within the last 10 pages. So yes, I can confidently say that healers are still struggling with that.

I've seen arguments that healers zone out and are bored. Thats a cheap excuse and doesn't absolve the player from doing their duty and also ignores that even when a healer had a full DPS kit back in HW, this still happened. It happens in all content and has been happening at all stages of the game. My pet theory is that most healers just dgaf. Like most things, I'm sure there's a lot of different reasons for why and at the end of the day, why doesn't really matter. That it happens regularly, is the more important factor for the devs.

Because it also reinforces the developers view that healing and dpsing shouldn't overlap; healers should heal, dps should dps. I don't really agree with them but I can see how the community has sent those signals to the devs and why the devs have kept doubling down on it. Healers let parties die while they dps, devs remove dps, healers still let parties die while they dps, devs remove more dps, and round and round we went.

If players want this to change then it needs to be demonstrated in the metrics the devs actually pay attention to, not in rants on the forum. The two ways to do that are:
1. Play healers as the devs want them to be played and play them with a level of competency that leads them to think players can handle more. (stop letting people die so you can dps.)
2. Do what the player base is already planning on doing. Abandon healers en masse to try and force the devs to rework the healers into something else; which most likely still won't include more DPS.

I don't think the boring play issue is going to be solved by a few more dps skills. If you dig up old threads from HW, you'll see players complaining about being bored, the lack of damage and the lack of dps options. So short of making them a dps class with a few heals, players aren't going to be satisfied. The bigger issue is, at its heart, its an issue with mechanics and how damage is dealt and its unlikely something that will fundamentally change. Even when the devs have made an effort to change it in the past, its only been a change of window dressing and not anything new. And they've shown they aren't really interested in doing more than that. This past live letter they went so far as to flat out state how the jobs are in 5.0 is the baseline they're going to build from and while they understand people want a return to the 3.0 style, it won't happen.

To put it bluntly, players want something completely different from what the devs are willing to build. You can fight against it, and likely lose, or you can accept what it is and try to work with it, or play a different job.

[ssunny2008]

And yet, DPSing does seem to prevent healers from healing. It doesn't take much effort to find stories about party wipes because healers refused to heal while they were DPSing; the Tales from the Duty Finder thread usually has a story about it within the last 10 pages. So yes, I can confidently say that healers are still struggling with that.

I wouldn´t give af about some stories of guys who died and claim it to be the healers fault. I´ve never met any healer who was like "idgaf about my job". Just one time a guy who was writing in the chat "Go invul, i´ll use bene then", when i was already dying. There are a bunch of different circumstances, but the standard call when a group wipes or someone dies is like "Ffs healer, do your job!".

Just some examples:

- Tank is dying and a whitemage is going for bene. You hear it going out, but thx to input lags and a bad netcode, the tank dies.

- Same with other heals while DPS classes die. An aoe heal is no instant heal. As further you´re away from the healer, the longer it needs until the system recognize "oh heal". Or you´ve mechanics where mostly caster classes die. E12s diamond dust is a good example. Everyone is getting the same heal, nobody makes a mistake, but the RDM is still dying? Why? Because the 2nd impact is phys. damage, maybe the aoe heal didn´t crit on him, but the others etc...

- Once i was in a static and heal was a permadiscussion. They even checked logs and mimimi about each other. But ppl don´t get, that you don´t need to heal that much, when it is on point. Anyway, the MCH died and died and died. "I had no heal."... The truth in the end was, that he never stayed with the group or in any healer bubble / star, whatever. Such like stuff can happen of course, but if it happens permanently, healers are going to be like "ok, die and learn then."
It´s not all about "healers have to heal". Tanks and DPS have to use their medigation tools and should move into a bubble too.

- In case of dungeons i´m even one of those badass tank who´s running slightly in circles with big pulls. I definately get less damage while doing it, meanwhile DPS crying for whatever reason. Other tanks just stand there and eat everything, maybe even use all their defs at once just to have none left at the 2nd big pull and stay there like "healer heal pls", but hey... ever heard of casting times?

The list goes on...

The most ppl don´t put deeper thoughts in their class, other classes or the circumstances. "Healers fault" is just the easiest way to get ride of any missplays out there. A bunch of ppl don´t even recognize if they fckd up by themself, but others perform really well. And the healer is the guy, which should take care for everything in the end.

Of course not everything will change drastically when we get more DPS spells or more damage income. But the most will focus more even in braindead content. Maybe even other ppl will practice more on other classes and use their tools then, instead of relying on "healers fault" or "pls wipe" because they died.

(That some unexperienced newcomers struggle, of course... especially when they picked WHM or SCH without the knowledge what "heal-class" means in a MMORPG. This should be expected, but if we talk about endgame?! It´s the same with any other class and SE should stop acting like that´s the standard and that ppl are not able to grow.)

[IckeDerTyp]

I just would've wanted different fairies back. So I could juggle the buffs again :x