My idea for Healer 'engagement'

[Kes13a]

This is just my idea for making healing more "engaging" since everyone and the kitchen sink is throwing out ideas (both good and horribly horribly bad) these days I thought.. why not?

First off, I main WHM, I enjoy healers, I like the playstyle, I really enjoy healing. I dont main a healer because I want to secretely dps. Can I? yes, I can, do I? I follow the current paradigm and if I am not healing, I am indeed doing dps.

I was in a particularily bad Bunker run last night, alliances were getting virtually wiped out, the floor was littered with bodies. if I did a couple grand of dps before the last boss I would be surprised. It was exhausting, thankless and overall, though we didnt wipe, we were extremely close in almost all fights until the end boss. It was also more fun that I have had as a healer in ages.

Healers, the ones who main healers, and not the ones that play it for a faster queue time and are screaming for more dps options, but people who play healers because they enjoy healing... do not need more dps options. Yes, our dps options are boring as hell. so give us another dps button to mind numbingly press again and again when we are not pressing the other one? No thank you. Stop wasting my time. If I want to dps, I have a basket ful of jobs that I can do that in.

If SE wants healers engaged and having fun, trash mobs need to be dialed up in damage output, make me heal, make the healer have to spend 85% of their time healing more than just the tank. Make healers have to actually heal. That will get my attention, and my engagement, and I will have fun. I suspect others who main healers would agree as well. I have a stack of buttons for healing, why do I not have to use most of them? Tanks use theirs, DPS uses theirs.. why don't I?

"Fixing" healers isnt about giving us more dps options, its about letting us do our prefered job, which is healing. If SE wants to give me another dps button in the hopes that it will improve my life, its a waste. Just another thing to add into downtime. If they change things so I have to use the rest of my buttons... thats a win.

[nebby00]

I agree, although I do like doing damage, if I am healing I want to be able to heal and juggle a dps spell in between heals, not sit around twiddling my thumbs and mindlessly pressing my damage button and occasionally throwing out a heal on the tank. Mobs in dungeons hit like wet noodles, and it makes it boring as hell healing through dungeons, especially if the tank is moving at a snail's pace. It's primarily why when I get the queue pop for Bardam's Mettle as a healer I get excited because I think "Wow, this dungeon hits kind of hard. At least I won't be half asleep throughout the whole thing". Or I queue purposefully for World of Darkness or Dun Saith since I know a good percentage of the time I'm going to have to be juggling raises and heals/MP management.

This is what I consider fun while healing, and I also wish that when healing it would include using the whole toolkit, not just one or two buttons :c

[Caurcas]

If mobs and bosses start hitting harder across the board then most casual healers, and healers who "just want to heal" would quit playing the role as they would be unable to keep up. Where as dps option cost them nothing and makes the role more interesting for people that actually play it at a decent level.

[Teno]

They've "tried" to do that, and then people quickly find ways to optimize and make it a one button spam gameplay in the end. The game is not tailored for continuous/non-predictable spikes of damage, especially with a 2.5s gcd and so many oGCDs. More support/damage is where it's been the best, best example being HW scholar. Or maybe remove/transform the myriad of oGCDs and make people choose between a dps/heal gcd similar to ARR.

[Tsukino]

I don't play healers too often, although I do have them all leveled up.

I'm not sure that enemies just dealing more damage is the answer here, because that has the potential to be inconvenient for a lot of people just to make some healers feel more engaged. Damage dealers leveling up for the first time in dungeons who might not have the best gear could end up being hit way too hard, and healers similarly who are learning to play the game might feel overwhelmed with how much is asked of them with more healing being necessary. Also in dungeons at the level cap, people often fight multiple groups of mobs at once, and healers already do a lot of healing there - if they did any more damage, it might prevent that style of run from happening.

Most importantly, IMO, sometimes in non-savage endgame activities like field operations or alliance raids, things take a sudden turn and a healer has to raise people outside their own party, heal a non-tank after a tank dies, or just generally raise and heal a ton of people in a short period of time. Regardless of any opinions on whether or not this "should" happen, it definitely does, and currently is recoverable. But with more damage incoming across the board, a lot of these situations would just turn into full wipes.

I wonder if maybe more interesting buffs for healers to use or more complicated debuffs from bosses could be a way to give healers more to do in certain content than just spam one damage spell between scheduled bursts of HP restoration, but I might be missing some obvious problems with that approach too.

[Momo_Kozuki]

More healing would add burdens to the healers, which SE has been actively tried to avoid for the sake of casual players. Remember the reason they don't make harder difficulty for 4-man dungeons? Because healers must be good or it is a wipe.


And I heard WoW healers also maximize their DPS output, so I don't see the reason why FF14 must nuke healers' DPS for the sake of healing.

[Kes13a]

They've "tried" to do that, and then people quickly find ways to optimize and make it a one button spam gameplay in the end. The game is not tailored for continuous/non-predictable spikes of damage, especially with a 2.5s gcd and so many oGCDs. More support/damage is where it's been the best, best example being HW scholar. Or maybe remove/transform the myriad of oGCDs and make people choose between a dps/heal gcd similar to ARR.

I remember the scholar screams after they changed it, since they meant they would actually have to heal more in dungeons

I'll be honest, if I want to dps, I will run a dps.

I dont mind more challenge, I think actual healer mains wouldnt either. just not into spamming a dps button

[Karthunk]

If SE wants healers engaged and having fun, trash mobs need to be dialed up in damage output, make me heal, make the healer have to spend 85% of their time healing more than just the tank. Make healers have to actually heal. That will get my attention, and my engagement, and I will have fun. I suspect others who main healers would agree as well. I have a stack of buttons for healing, why do I not have to use most of them? Tanks use theirs, DPS uses theirs.. why don't I?

Get ready for the healer "mains" to come out of the wood work telling you why this is a terrible idea but giving them a dps rotation will fix everything.

[RobynDaBank]

I really like this post, OP. I fully resonate with it! ^.^

[Kes13a]

Get ready for the healer "mains" to come out of the wood work telling you why this is a terrible idea but giving them a dps rotation will fix everything.

yeah, I am waiting for that too actually. ^^