The idea that we need to DPS must go.

[T-Owl]

Snip

Yeah, thats alot of words to say that you feel entitled to afk for extended periods of time in encounters because of "muh immersion". Every combat focussed game ever can be boiled down to your avatar/group/units being supposed to decrease the life points of your opposition to 0, which is done through damage. So damage in every single combat focussed game ever is basically the most efficent action you can commit to, as long as you can afford to do it without your avatar/group/units dying. Healing by the nature of it is purely reactive and will always be reactive and limited in its use, because there is always only so much damage you can heal without wasting time or ressources. Even in the original Final Fantasy, healers would dps if there is nothing to heal because anything else would be just the waste of a turn. Their dps options were just limited to physical attacks up until you get holy, which usually is a late level spell. But from that point on, yeah, Healers would dps as much as possible.

And actually, you are kind of wrong. Like, objectively, when it comes to the MMO-Genre. What you are describing is the oldschool way of MMO design and it was never that popular. In actuality, the MMO-Genre only blew up in popularity back when World of Warcraft introduced changes like actually allowing players to be able to reach max level through solo quests alone and having a high focus on challenging high end group content. Your vision of the MMO-Genre was just never that popular and by shticking to it, the genre itself would have remained a niche one indefinitely. FF14 followed the bad new trends set by World of Warcraft compared to the more oldschool formate of FF11 which focussed on a long, extended and group-focussed leveling grind over challenging endgame content and guess what, its more popular than FF11 was at its best day.

Also, what else is there to implement but gameplay content? Like, what do you expect, that SE just dedicates patches to introduce new leveling dungeons?

[Semirhage]

Next time I play Baldur's Gate, maybe I'll revisit the cleric class. I've definitely played it wrong in the past. For the most immersive roleplay experience I'll recruit up a party of 5 NPCs, then have my character stand in the back during battle. When it comes time to issue my main character commands, I'll look at everyone's health bar. If they're all full, I'll RP my character screaming "HEALERS SHOULD HEAL ONLY", then imagine the rest of the party coming to the conclusion that the Bhaalspawn is a crazy person.

[ty_taurus]

Next time I play Baldur's Gate, maybe I'll revisit the cleric class. I've definitely played it wrong in the past. For the most immersive roleplay experience I'll recruit up a party of 5 NPCs, then have my character stand in the back during battle. When it comes time to issue my main character commands, I'll look at everyone's health bar. If they're all full, I'll RP my character screaming "HEALERS SHOULD HEAL ONLY", then imagine the rest of the party coming to the conclusion that the Bhaalspawn is a crazy person.

I really don't understand where this "healers ONLY heal" mindset even comes from. The only game I can even think of that actually has healers function like that is Everquest, but like, every other RPG I've ever seen had support characters flex between offense and defense.
- Literally every Final Fantasy
- Every Persona
- Pokemon (Chansey almost always carries Seismic Toss)
- Fire Emblem, many priests begin only being able to use staves but promote to using offensive magic.
- WoW
- Dofus/Wakfu
- Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Every Dragon Quest
- Every Star Ocean
- Every .Hack
- Every Tales of (In the earlier games, you typically do have 1 main healer who is mostly busy managing HP, but they also weave in offensive spells).
- Every Xenoblade and Xenosaga

Like seriously... what RPGs have characters that only ever heal throughout the entire game?

[T-Owl]

I really don't understand where this "healers ONLY heal" mindset even comes from. The only game I can even think of that actually has healers function like that is Everquest, but like, every other RPG I've ever seen had support characters flex between offense and defense.
- Literally every Final Fantasy
- Every Persona
- Pokemon (Chansey almost always carries Seismic Toss)
- Fire Emblem, many priests begin only being able to use staves but promote to using offensive magic.
- WoW
- Dofus/Wakfu
- Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Every Dragon Quest
- Every Star Ocean
- Every .Hack
- Every Tales of (In the earlier games, you typically do have 1 main healer who is mostly busy managing HP, but they also weave in offensive spells).
- Every Xenoblade and Xenosaga

Like seriously... what RPGs have characters that only ever heal throughout the entire game?

It probably comes from early MMOs, especially WoW, when mana was still a scarce ressource artificially enforcing using lower ranked heals to preserve it and periods of passivity and not casting anything to regenerate it, combined with a lower level of skill the average player would have, due to this particular style of tab target MMO being still fairly new to mass audiences. There is also more constant chip damage incoming in WoW, which allows for heal spaming and the illusion of looking busy, though this already has changed in higher levels of play and healers are expected to DPS at this point, especially in M+ content.

So its really a remnant from a time in WoW, which is the direct inspiration to FF14s gameplay system, where it wasn't healing requirements but mana restraints not allowing healers to heal, plus healer damage at this point being much much lower than it was at any point in FF14. And before anyone goes all nostalgic on this golden age, it was a time where healers were literally forced to not cast anything for over 5 seconds so that their mana regeneration could kick in and even dps casters had to stop casting mid combat, but that was okay because Rogues and Warriors also had to desperately wait until their ressources filled enough to press one single button.

[Silver-Strider]

Snip

How many RPGs have healers that are strictly restricted to healing though? Maybe some old school RPGs but even some of those had healers be capable of damaging undead with Healing spells so you weren't even healing all the time in those.

The most modern game that I can think of in which you could play a purely passive character is probably the Divinity series and even then, enemies dealt too much damage to realistically heal thru it all that going purely offensive with some support was the better option and it even had the Healing Spells damage undead enemies trope.

[Aurora_Sylphy]

Troll thread aside (the moment the OP talked about 'honing their rescue skills' really set the alarms off on that), my main problem with this topic is how disingenuous those who refuse to ever push a single DPS spell. No one is asking you to do nothing but DPS, or be that chad healer that manages to heal any content whatsoever (even in savage) without ever having to touch a non-damage GDC. Nor are we asking you to optimize your damage and try to maximise your damage and minimize your healing (as this requires whole team competence and skill, as if your other party members, especially in savage, derp or make mistakes, or take avoidable damage which is perfectly understandable and reasonable from time to time, you won't be able to). No, all we are asking is IF you don't have to heal, you might as well push a damage button. In dungeons, trials and raids different healers will have different ideas of what HP% you'll need to drop to before they consider healing, and that's fair enough. It's a play style difference (for example, I would heal the moment my tanks HP drops around to 50/60% in a pack because, especially in lv90 dungeons, I know how quickly that 50% can drop to 0 in WTW pulls if the tank derps or steps in a single AOE and I'd rather err on the side of caution rather then risk a wipe)

The point is, if everyone is at 100% (and there is currently no damage), you either stand still or push a damage button. There is no single fight in the game that has 100% uptime of constant damage. That means there is no fight where 100% uptime of healing is needed. If everyone is at 100%, you don't need to heal. At that point if you have more then a GDC or 2 gap of time before you need to heal, you should be pushing a damage button, otherwise you are spending multiple instances of 10-20sec in a fight doing absolute nothing but standing there motionlessly looking pretty (so basically a summoner's carbuncle at this point, except unlike that you're neither something cute nor emotional support).

That is just unfair to the rest of the 7 people in your team if they don't get those same bouts of downtime where they have to do something. It's called being a team player. Not elitist or something crazy, simply asking you attempt to do some damage if you don't need to heal. It's not a hard concept, and anyone who refuses to at least try and attempt it does not have anxiety, mana issues, or whatever. It's simply laziness. If you are spending 20s of a fight doing nothing because you don't need to heal, then everyone else also deserves the same right, and that means nothing will ever really get done no?

The other thing that gets me is outside of savage and ultimates (and even that is eliminated once you hit the farm/general weekly clear stage with your static) that has interesting healing (or more accurately, inconsistent bouts of healing), healing is very straightforward and simple. Surely doing nothing is as dull as a sack of rocks, right?

[Rilifane]

It made sense in WoW classic when we had Accuracy, 5s rule and so on but that was ages ago and even then there were some nice opportunities for damage depending on the content.
The only game where I heal spammed was in Ragnarok Online when I partied with a GCD Crusader because they nuked themself with every aoe cast, so it was my duty to keep buffs up but otherwise just heal spam like mad or I got a truck load of mobs making a beeline for me. That was one of I don't know how many classes/ specs in a single game. With every other spec it was either a more supportive playstyle with focus on buffs/ debuffs or even offensive by actively helping with damage.

The battlefield is not a peaceful enviroment and we're not nurses holding a patient's hand.
It's complete nonsense from a RPG standpoint. In every RPG I've ever played, single player or MMO, a healer that comes even close to a battlefield was always expected to be able to defend themself and attack as necessary.
Every D&D game had a huge array of much more useful spells for Clerics/ Druids than heal spells. Every oldschool grindy MMO like RO or Flyff had an alternative, offensive spec for the Priest-type classes and if someone went the support route, they had a lot more to do than just heal spam from the back row. Most older asian MMOs had some pretty nice dps skills that didn't need accuracy and were used as a downtime filler. Some even had synergies between damage and healing. Some healed entirely through damage.
In every RPG you're just a glorified potion that takes up a party spot if you're playing a "pure healer". The "pure healer" only makes sense for someone that works in a city or army camp and never sets foot outside where it's dangerous... which would be equivalent to standing in front of the dungeon entrance and waiting for the party to come out to patch them up after their (hopefully) successful adventure. I'm sure that's fun.

How many RPGs have healers that are strictly restricted to healing though? Maybe some old school RPGs but even some of those had healers be capable of damaging undead with Healing spells so you weren't even healing all the time in those.

The most modern game that I can think of in which you could play a purely passive character is probably the Divinity series and even then, enemies dealt too much damage to realistically heal thru it all that going purely offensive with some support was the better option and it even had the Healing Spells damage undead enemies trope.

Eh, the Divinity series has a pretty small array of healing spells and with their cooldown of several rounds, it was just a waste to focus on that. It works as a fun build on lower difficulties but even if you combine as many schools as possible to get a pure healer kit, it's not enough to keep it useful. And they scale so poorly to the point of being almost wasted AP in late game. They were great in early game when you barely had any skills and auto'd everything to death but quickly lost value as you progressed.

[Shuuli]

Play some P3S in PF and you get all the healing challenge you will need :3 Good luck!

[Silver-Strider]

Eh, the Divinity series has a pretty small array of healing spells and with their cooldown of several rounds, it was just a waste to focus on that. It works as a fun build on lower difficulties but even if you combine as many schools as possible to get a pure healer kit, it's not enough to keep it useful. And they scale so poorly to the point of being almost wasted AP in late game. They were great in early game when you barely had any skills and auto'd everything to death but quickly lost value as you progressed.

Only if you didn't abuse scrolls and there was a LOT of stupidly overpowered Scrolls you could make in that game.

[MerlinCross]

I really don't understand where this "healers ONLY heal" mindset even comes from. The only game I can even think of that actually has healers function like that is Everquest, but like, every other RPG I've ever seen had support characters flex between offense and defense.
- Literally every Final Fantasy
- Every Persona
- Pokemon (Chansey almost always carries Seismic Toss)
- Fire Emblem, many priests begin only being able to use staves but promote to using offensive magic.
- WoW
- Dofus/Wakfu
- Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Every Dragon Quest
- Every Star Ocean
- Every .Hack
- Every Tales of (In the earlier games, you typically do have 1 main healer who is mostly busy managing HP, but they also weave in offensive spells).
- Every Xenoblade and Xenosaga

Like seriously... what RPGs have characters that only ever heal throughout the entire game?

At WORST, you'd have a healer that can do light damage or have plenty of buffs or debuffs. A good example, from your own list; Rene from Star Ocean 2. She could do some damage and had a few buffs to throw out but she's not going to go forward and attack.

Also most of what we'd probably think of White Mages tended to only heal, at least until they got Holy/Dia but even then they had more protective spells or debuffs to use. Also depending on the game they could fish for or use Staffs to proc other spells.

I mean I want to see how some people that think "Healers only heal" play other games.