What if we stopped calling the green role healers?

[Risvertasashi]

If you've been here long enough, you've seen it - the back and forth about healer DPS that's gone on for years and years and years.

And never stops. And never will.

I've introduced people to the game with no MMO experience, and so no expectations on what healers should be from other MMOs. But when I explain they spend 90%+ of their time DPSing, I get the questions you'd expect from older veterans: "Why are they called healers then?" "What if someone wants to heal?" etc etc

But I think that's a really good question. Why are they called healers?

So I'm going to make a radical suggestion. One that will probably never happen, but, hey, one can dream, right?

Let's rename the healer role to "hybrid" or "tactician" or something. I don't like "support" as much because I'd worry people would still expect too much healing with that term, but it'd be better than the status quo.

If SE correctly sets expectations, maybe we can finally put this ouroboros to rest.

[Sebazy]

In all honesty, if SE did change the name, Support just seems the obvious choice, hybrid is a little obscure and vague, tactician just doesn't really make sense in the light of what we currently have.

To me, support implies that we fill in the gaps. If the group needs something, we are there to plug that gap.

Simply put, if the group needs healing, we heal them. If the group needs DPS, we help add our own DPS into the mix.

[Risvertasashi]

In all honesty, if SE did change the name, Support just seems the obvious choice, hybrid is a little obscure and vague, tactician just doesn't really make sense in the light of what we currently have.

To me, support implies that we fill in the gaps. If the group needs something, we are there to plug that gap.

Simply put, if the group needs healing, we heal them. If the group needs DPS, we help add our own DPS into the mix.

It might need a better word than what I could think of off hand, I just worry support - even if it technically doesn't have to have anything to do with healing - has a strong connotation of healing within the gaming industry. But, as mentioned, I'd take it - I think it'd at least lessen the problem.

But I think you give tactician just a bit too little credit. If FF were to adopt it, it wouldn't be the first fantasy IP using it to mean "guy/gal that plugs the gaps in a group, capable of both damage and healing and sometimes buffs/CC." Hey, I mean, SCH's entire fantasy is based around that.

[Sebazy]

If we still had our debuff kits more akin to 2.x-3.x I think I'd be more in agreement with tactician for sure.

Right now I just don't see what's very tactical about pressing glare/broil etc 100 times

Maybe it would give SE a nudge to add a bit of depth back to the role that doesn't involve simple DPS or healing. That could only be a god thing.

[Seraphor]

80% of your skills are healing skills. You're a healer.

[Sebazy]

80% of your skills are healing skills. You're a healer.

~70% of your actions done are dps actions. You're a... oh wait

[ItMe]

~70% of your actions done are dps actions. You're a... oh wait

Then why isn't the idea to just keep calling them Green DPS?
Why try and popularize a strange new term that'll mean much the same thing?

[Laphicet]

80% of your skills are healing skills. You're a healer.

But do you actually use those skills? No, you sit there spamming one button while occasionally pressing a DoT the whole time. You're effectively only a healer in name as far as gameplay is concerned. Mere distribution of skills does not a gameplay style make.

Let's take another, more recent game for an example of this. Tales of Arise, as much as I loathe it. In that game two of your six party members, Shion and Dohalim, are the only ones with multiple heal skills, having two to three instead of one or zero heals: a status cure, a basic heal, and an AOE heal (though Dohalim's AOE heal is DLC locked because fuck you bamco wants money). The rest of these characters' kits is focused on damage... does that make them not healers? No, they're the healers, because you actually have to use those healing skills quite regularly in combat and sometimes even try to get such off mid-combo or your AI party members will die. And even if you let the AI play as the healers they're very liberal with the heals due to how high outgoing damage is and how shit the AI is at dodging big hits.

Now compare that to FFXIV where despite our kits being LOADED with heals, we barely use them. Instead spamming our damage spells over and over and over. Barely using a heal once every 20 or 30 seconds in most casual content and even more sparsely in anything that's not a dungeon. Not to even get into the 1-spam borefest that is using a healer for MSQ content. I did that... and that was a mistake I'll never repeat again. And then you compare this to basically any other MMO on the market and healers will have full offensive kits there AND spend more time healing, it's absurd.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

To me, support implies that we fill in the gaps. If the group needs something, we are there to plug that gap.

Not gonna lie, this line here made me think: "Yeah, we're a support to fill in that one slot so the duty can be commenced."
I still like the idea of calling them "Support" better, though. It pretty much describes the reality of how healers played.

80% of your skills are healing skills. You're a healer.

GNB has more DPS related buttons than tanky-tanky buttons. They're a blue DPS!

[lisaa]

I've introduced people to the game with no MMO experience, and so no expectations on what healers should be from other MMOs. But when I explain they spend 90%+ of their time DPSing, I get the questions you'd expect from older veterans: "Why are they called healers then?" "What if someone wants to heal?"

It's so obvious and intuitive that even someone who never played mmos can tell that healers are supposed to heal. Yet this forum is so defensive of its healer dps