SE FINALLY ANSWERED THE HEALERS COMMUNITY LONG ANSWERED QUESTION

[Saefinn]

Is it though? I don't think timer tracking and more button press can mean forgiving. Perhaps when we comapre them mathmetically, older iteration of healers might really be more forgiving. However, that does not mean its more forgiving on player skills.

I guess one problem is that I don't really see how it was that much more difficult. I don't think we've had a complex or complicated DPS. This is because it's never been a rotation in a traditional sense, you just go out what you could when you could, I think the real 'challenge' came with Cleric Stance more than anything and they removed that but it was a risk/reward mechanic they've since removed.

Because I don't think

Adloquium -> Bio -> Bio II -> Lustrate -> Miasma -> Whispering Dawn -> Bane -> Shadowflare -> Virus -> Ruin -> Ruin
Regen -> Aero -> Aero II -> Cure II -> Aero III -> Medica II -> Assize -> Stone III/Holy -> Stone III/Holy -> Stone III/Holy

Is that much more complicated to pull off than:

Adloquium -> Biolysis -> Broil -> Lustrate -> Broil -> Whispering Dawn -> Broil -> Broil -> Broil -> Broil -> Broil
Regen -> Dia -> Assize -> Cure II -> Glare/Holy -> Medica II -> Glare/Holy -> Glare/Holy -> Glare/Holy -> Glare/Holy

When you've memorised the order you're going to do your DPS spells in, then it's a case of doing them in between heals. Then the only other thing you need to keep an eye on is your DoTs, which you're already doing with Biolysis/Dia/Combust.

There was no imperative to get off a DPS rotation as quickly as you can like in a DPS job and it was pretty lower pressure and a "use them if you can" kind of deal just as it is now because your healing took priority and you wouldn't lose out on missing a combo or a cooldown (or wasting a cooldown), and not casting a Broil instead of a heal is still a DPS loss just as getting a DoT off later is a DPS loss, but only for the damage those heals took away.

[WaxSw]

The gap exists for multitude of reasons, I don't believe those are all about mentality issues.

Healers are the only role with 0 dps players on them, this allows for the creation of a lower skill floor and the creation of the gap, its important to note that also healers are a job conditioned by party performance (mitigation, not taking extra damage, etc) this can hurt their performance heavily, when you get those 2 together you can see how the healers have the widest gap of any role when their job design is by far the more braindead

Healer dps is simplistic because healers have other responsibility. The difficulty itself lies on the balance between your dps and healing. If reaching purple parses is that easy as you said, then any healers with intention to get good, and I believe there are lots of them, should have purple parses already.

Any Sch with bis with good heal management can reach purple parses by spamming ruin 2 if their party is not bad, this says a lot about how oversimplistic they are, lets mention that one thing is healers being simplistic and another is braindead, pressing 1 button is braindead and thats the healers we got. Thinking we have to have that stupid rotation just because we have to manage healing is something that is proven wrong when over 70% of the time we're dpsing, we simply do not manage constantly the heals, in fact doing that is the exception at any level of difficulty, we're dps that sometimes throw heals instead of healers that sometime dps yet we're denied the rotation we deserve.

I don''t know how you value the skill level of healers, but to me, I will look at both their dps contribution and healing contribution. If one of them is low, they are not top teir healers to me.

And that would be an unfair way of valuing them. Healing is subjected to the party, in a party where the 2 healer coordinate and the mitigation is on point their healing performance is lower because there is little to heal and everything is more optimized yet by your standard those would be bad healers, while the noob that spams medica 2 every raidwide and has mediocre dps would be a good healer even tough they do not coordinate nor optimize.
Healing by deffinition is something that as you get better it goes down because as hp is binary you want to get close to that "I heal just enough to survive" since there is no point going past that, if you want to value the skill of a healer look at their efficiency not how much they heal because any low skilled player can reach high healing parses yet none of them are efficient.

I just don't believe adding more dps options rasies no skill floor nor skill ceiling despite my personal preference on this matter.

This is simply not true, more dps options raises the skill ceiling as there are more things to track and more variables that can interact with the encounter on a regular basis, it doesn't raise the skill floor because you can always ignore them and play like today while you're learning but just by adding the option to not do that you get a new dimension to the encounter that previously you did not have, effectively raising the skill ceiling.

Is it though? I don't think timer tracking and more button press can mean forgiving. Perhaps when we comapre them mathmetically, older iteration of healers might really be more forgiving. However, that does not mean its more forgiving on player skills.

It is, an important thing to consider is that the mistakes are usually patched with gcd heals so lets assume a healer that has to gcd heal because someone made a mistake or they fucked up something.

Lets say you get 2 dots and 1 gcd nuke, lets say the 2 dots combined are 180 (90 each) potency per tick and you get the nuke that has 180 potency too every 3s, if you make a mistake and need a gcd heal since the dots are ticking you're only losing 180 potency (the nuke) or 50% of your damage in that span of time, if you forget to refresh a dot 1 tick you'd only lose 90 potency (25% of your damage) as there are 2 you have more leeway to refresh them due to not having high % of your damage on a single source

Lets take current Sch, we have a 70 potency dot and 290 potency nuke, if we have to gcd heal because mistakes happen we're losing 290 potency or 80% of our damage and if we don't refresh the dot and lose one tick we lose 70 potency (20% of our damage)

If you compare them you can see that current sch is punished far more than the theoretical dot mage due to having a higher percentage of their damage on a single source that is denied by the need of using said gcd on something like gcd heals or rez, thats why a dot mage is less punishing because while you have to track more thing (higher ceiling) it also allows for a less damaging playstyle when shit hits the fan (accessibility)

[VeolE]

Thank you, this is all I have been saying since the beginning. That and that I would prefer not to have more buttons than my bio/broil, but if ONE more button will make everyone freaking happy and at least do more damage that isn't part of some convoluted rotation/opener then fine lets have it.

God damn...still... who hurt you though?

[Semirhage]

I cannot overstate how hard my eyes roll at the argument that my user experience as a healer *must* consist largely of casting one spell over and over and over again because if it doesn't...then...then...someone somewhere might wipe their party! Is that one spell a healing spell? Naaaaah, no, it's what you do when you don't need to heal. So what's the problem? It's that downtime kit...it stares at you. Menacingly! The very idea of having anything to do beyond heal spamming is so paralyzing that its very presence causes wipes.

Oh I know. Dragoon is terrifying. I can't play it, the rotation is just too hard to remember. If I can't spend 70% of an encounter pressing True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust, I'll be too confused and my low damage will cause us to fail DPS checks! Better update the job to play like this immediately. You wouldn't want to stress me out with all that pressure, design team.

That made-up scenario sounds ludicrous, I know. Now, which parts aren't exactly the same stupid nonsense argument made about healers? Sure, sure, the argument is about the job's primary role instead of its downtime activity. Which just makes it even more relevant, because having a scary, impossible primary responsibility is even more dire than a scary, impossible downtime activity, no?

Excuses for BS, awful design like this are just that; excuses. "It's too scary for newbies" is an excuse. Design it better then. You don't treat DPS mains like they're too stupid to remember more than one thing at a time.

[Sqwall]

Oh I know. Dragoon is terrifying. I can't play it, the rotation is just too hard to remember. If I can't spend 70% of an encounter pressing True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust, I'll be too confused and my low damage will cause us to fail DPS checks! Better update the job to play like this immediately. You wouldn't want to stress me out with all that pressure, design team.

Excuses for BS, awful design like this are just that; excuses. "It's too scary for newbies" is an excuse. Design it better then. You don't treat DPS mains like they're too stupid to remember more than one thing at a time.

I sort of agree with this...sort of. I'm all for making something complex and engaging. But it has to be functional. It's Form over function then it just doesn't do it ANY favors. It's just terrible to play by design. DPS as a healer is embarrassingly simple. Like you have to suck at writing your own name kind of hard.

Plus I think some people find some jobs easier to play then others. I find NIN smooth as hell, and DRG incredibly straight forward. Then I get to BLM I'm all thumbs for some reason, perhaps I'm just used to moving around. Now that's not to say the job is hard, no. It's just different then what I'm used to.

Take Redmage for example. Simple, easy to understand, but when I learned more about the job the more I realized I was playing it kind of bad.

That's they way I feel with healer DPS, some people just don't know DPS IS part of healing. Literally at the same time...healer DPS isn't required for most encounters. For me AST already has a lot to do, but cards take priority before getting that next malefic out. Combust and Malefic are just there for you to help out if the shit hasn't hit the fan. Tanking is so far on the other end of the spectrum in terms of "what to do next", and I usually find tanking VERY structured. When to use a CD, when to invuln, when to tank swap, when to party mitigate, when to time running when an AOE goes off. Healing is on the other end...and it's MUCH more unpredictable, a DPS might get hit by avoidable AOE resulting in a heal...which heal? I have to judge the amount of damage they took. Essential Dignity? Benefic II? Aspected Benefic?....pick one for the situation. Healing in a WELL TUNED static is incredibly boring IMO...nobody get's hit...nobody dies...nobody even worries about the enrage. I'm just there to heal the tank busters and raidwide AOE's, or take the occasional tether/bait AOE stack markers.

I wish there were more things for healers to do...but there isn't. That's why I keep asking for tanks to really get smacked harder....and MUCH more often. Make healing stressful. SE won't do that because they want healing accessible....which I truly believe they are wrong here. They don't give enough credit to how good some healers are.

[Saefinn]

I cannot overstate how hard my eyes roll at the argument that my user experience as a healer *must* consist largely of casting one spell over and over and over again because if it doesn't...then...then...someone somewhere might wipe their party! Is that one spell a healing spell? Naaaaah, no, it's what you do when you don't need to heal. So what's the problem? It's that downtime kit...it stares at you. Menacingly! The very idea of having anything to do beyond heal spamming is so paralyzing that its very presence causes wipes.

Oh I know. Dragoon is terrifying. I can't play it, the rotation is just too hard to remember. If I can't spend 70% of an encounter pressing True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust True Thrust, I'll be too confused and my low damage will cause us to fail DPS checks! Better update the job to play like this immediately. You wouldn't want to stress me out with all that pressure, design team.

That made-up scenario sounds ludicrous, I know. Now, which parts aren't exactly the same stupid nonsense argument made about healers? Sure, sure, the argument is about the job's primary role instead of its downtime activity. Which just makes it even more relevant, because having a scary, impossible primary responsibility is even more dire than a scary, impossible downtime activity, no?

Excuses for BS, awful design like this are just that; excuses. "It's too scary for newbies" is an excuse. Design it better then. You don't treat DPS mains like they're too stupid to remember more than one thing at a time.

Pretty much.

Embrace the Healer DPS hybrid concept
Or
Makes healers have meaningful utility/support in their downtime
Or
Boost healing requirements to a level that healing is engaging in all scenarios
Or
A combination of any of the above

Pressing 1 or 2 buttons for the vast majority of the time is not a feasible option. When I can do a level 80 roulette, lose the healer at the start and reach the last boss without a healer (which is when we got a new one) then a healer's contribution to a party is not really valued by design.

[Recon1o6]

Pretty much.

Embrace the Healer DPS hybrid concept
Or
Makes healers have meaningful utility/support in their downtime
Or
Boost healing requirements to a level that healing is engaging in all scenarios
Or
A combination of any of the above

Pressing 1 or 2 buttons for the vast majority of the time is not a feasible option. When I can do a level 80 roulette, lose the healer at the start and reach the last boss without a healer (which is when we got a new one) then a healer's contribution to a party is not really valued by design.

1 and 2 are the choices, 3 is just a bonus because doing just that won't make levelling, fate grinding, solo duties etc any more fun.

[MellowMink]

Surprised that there aren't also arguments from some people to reduce the number of DPS actions for tanks by people who are opposed to healers getting even just a tiny bit more variety in the area of optional DPS attacks. After all, tanks should primarily focus on distracting enemies and mitigating damage, right? If tanks want to DPS, then play as a DPS, you know? If tanks get more than a few DPS buttons, then newer players might get scared even after reaching level 80 (soon to be level 90) and playing with the job for dozens to hundreds of hours, and we can't risk having that happen to a single person, so let's punish people who want the skill ceiling (not floor) to be raised. (That was all sarcasm in case that wasn't obvious, by the way.)

...Seriously, why is it that only healer jobs get the short stick when it comes to needing to not scare any players with the least amount of willingness to improve with regards to damage? It's incredibly unfair that healers who want to best optimize their overall performance feel like they're being punished with more boring gameplay as they improve.

[FoxCh40s]

Surprised that there aren't also arguments from some people to reduce the number of DPS actions for tanks by people who are opposed to healers getting even just a tiny bit more variety in the area of optional DPS attacks. After all, tanks should primarily focus on distracting enemies and mitigating damage, right? If tanks want to DPS, then play as a DPS, you know? If tanks get more than a few DPS buttons, then newer players might get scared even after reaching level 80 (soon to be level 90) and playing with the job for dozens to hundreds of hours, and we can't risk having that happen to a single person, so let's punish people who want the skill ceiling (not floor) to be raised. (That was all sarcasm in case that wasn't obvious, by the way.)

...Seriously, why is it that only healer jobs get the short stick when it comes to needing to not scare any players with the least amount of willingness to improve with regards to damage? It's incredibly unfair that healers who want to best optimize their overall performance feel like they're being punished with more boring gameplay as they improve.

Because they don't play healers. I legit want them to play ONLY healer for a month straight, and see what they say after that.

Actually, a month is too forgiving, 6 months, no Dps, no Tanks, no Blue Mage. JUST Healers.

[Melorie]

Because they don't play healers. I legit want them to play ONLY healer for a month straight, and see what they say after that.

Actually, a month is too forgiving, 6 months, no Dps, no Tanks, no Blue Mage. JUST Healers.

I'm usually a one-trick-pony in almost every game I play, and it is ALWAYS a support class. I don't have problems with most things being repetitive, and yet... I never had the burnout I'm feeling with playing healer in general mmos as I'm having with FFXIV. The healer design is simply draining my will to play the game. I still enjoy a lot of things that this game offers, but I can't feel any sort of hype after the combat live letter because I'm seeing healer situation being ignored again.