The idea that we need to DPS must go.

[Avenheit]

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?

as far as I know....that star wars mmorpg, I had a mate tell me that when he was healing in a raid, they started yelling at him for doing damage. and this wasn't a DUDE YOU'RE NOT HEALING situation, it was a, "Damn, everyone is full hp and im standing here doing nothing, maybe i'll dps" moment.

[Absimiliard]

Necromance if you want to
We can bring your friends threads to life
But your friends threads aren't dead,
And if they aren't dead,
Then they're no friends threads of mine

But uh... the requisite meme now deployed, where did healers get the idea they're not supposed to DPS? It's been expected of them since at least the First Coil of Bahamut.

[MiaShino]

as far as I know....that star wars mmorpg, I had a mate tell me that when he was healing in a raid, they started yelling at him for doing damage. and this wasn't a DUDE YOU'RE NOT HEALING situation, it was a, "Damn, everyone is full hp and im standing here doing nothing, maybe i'll dps" moment.

If you are talking about the Swtor, absolutely not. Healers deeps in Swtor all the darn time, at the least I did. The game even encourages this based upon certain abilities or tactical healers gain access too.

Example; Storm’s Succor

Damaging an enemy with Volt Rush causes your ally closest to the enemy to be healed, scaling with how many Energized charges you have

This modifies Sage/Sorcerer nuke spell, it has three charges. Each charge consumes additional force energy (manana) while doing additional damage per successive hit, also healing more per additional hit.

Your friend was dealing with stoopids.

[IDontPetLalas]

If you are talking about the Swtor, absolutely not. Healers deeps in Swtor all the darn time, at the least I did. The game even encourages this based upon certain abilities or tactical healers gain access too.

Example; Storm’s Succor


This modifies Sage/Sorcerer nuke spell, it has three charges. Each charge consumes additional force energy (manana) while doing additional damage per successive hit, also healing more per additional hit.

Your friend was dealing with stoopids.

Agreed. I dropped SWTOR a while ago, however when I was playing my Sage on the Republic side I had the choice of 3 specs, one more heals focussed, one that was more of a dot spec, one that was a lightning spec. So 2 more DPS focussed specs that gave FAR more than 1, 2, 3 as our options and depending upon the spec also affected mobility, etc.

[MiaShino]

Agreed. I dropped SWTOR a while ago, however when I was playing my Sage on the Republic side I had the choice of 3 specs, one more heals focussed, one that was more of a dot spec, one that was a lightning spec. So 2 more DPS focussed specs that gave FAR more than 1, 2, 3 as our options and depending upon the spec also affected mobility, etc.

That was my main! The "weakest healer" according to everyone who would always wish for me to switch to merc or operative. Never had issues finding time to deeps on the "weakest healer" not once and Swtor healing requirements make FF14 look like babies first mmo. Would recommend others attempt Gods from the machine on non story mode. Would looooooove to see FF14 party finder tackle the interrupt phase on final boss. Did I mention most/all healing in Swtorland is gcd? Still had time to deeps!

[Jirah]

Add on the ridiculous request to add “more DPS to healers” yes we we need more of a damage kit but no it shouldn’t overshadow the point of healing, and content is so mild half the time healers are irrelevant and are just twiddling their thumbs waiting for someone to get a invul, outside of savage it’s much worse

[P0W3RK1D]

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?

Eden Eternal was another one of thoes games with good healers that also dps. They had Cleric, Bard, Shaman, and sage. Each class felt so colorful, unique, and had distinctly different playstyles, it made healers feel good to play, not to mention they were healing BEASTS!

man i miss that game.

[Tierala]

If you are talking about the Swtor, absolutely not. Healers deeps in Swtor all the darn time, at the least I did. The game even encourages this based upon certain abilities or tactical healers gain access too.

Example; Storm’s Succor


This modifies Sage/Sorcerer nuke spell, it has three charges. Each charge consumes additional force energy (manana) while doing additional damage per successive hit, also healing more per additional hit.

Your friend was dealing with stoopids.

it's possible they were talking about Star Wars Galaxies

[Sebazy]

The only game I can even think of that actually has healers function like that is Everquest

Bit late to the party but even Everquest wasn't in the healers only heal camp.

As a very well geared Shaman main for the era I played, if it didn't death touch or flurry me to death in the space of a cast, I could probably kill it given time. My server generally had a pretty good habit of not KSing small teams on raids and thanks to this I solo'd quite a few named Velious dragons, planar bosses, epic quest lines culminating in the point where I would routinely 'reserve' and start clearing PoGrowth solo which at the time no other class could do because of the then CC immune warders. For farming AAs I just grabbed whomever and adapted, I could pull, I could heal, I could tank (And hold solid agro off just about anyone who wasn't an SK), I could CC.

Druids weren't quite as extreme in what they could solo, but generally if they could snare/root it, it was farm status if it didn't death touch. Clerics were the closest to a heal only healer even if my guild's hammer wielding blue dorf army would have you think otherwise.

WoW is probably the main culprit of this mentality I guess. It's not that heal specced healers can't deal damage (I ran Ele/Resto Shaman in vanilla/bc and it generally took a decent level of coordination to get a handle on my antics in PvP), but rather it just wasn't worthwhile at least back when I played. But this wasn't at the expense of us doing anything else. Early on we were spam casting low level heals to stay efficient for longer encounters, at other points we were often handling various forms of CC or buffing/debuffing.

I'd have absolutely no problem if FFXIV flipped to a model where healers actually needed to *properly* focus on healing, but the people that keep screeching this never seem to understand that as things are, it would be truly horrific if this happened right now without some sweeping changes to accompany it. Once you start playing in a manner that's GCD efficient, you spend remarkably few GCDs actually healing. Take the filler in between these bursts of HPS away and currently we are left with almost nothing.

SE made all healer CC completely worthless

We have very little debuffing left in our kits

Our utility is currently pretty much limited to 'bursts' every 2 minutes be that a legitimate burst on AST or simply pressing a button as anyone else

So I propose to anyone who still feels to need to tell us that we need to stop DPSing. Tell us: What do we do instead?

[ty_taurus]

Bit late to the party but even Everquest wasn't in the healers only heal camp.

As a very well geared Shaman main for the era I played, if it didn't death touch or flurry me to death in the space of a cast, I could probably kill it given time. My server generally had a pretty good habit of not KSing small teams on raids and thanks to this I solo'd quite a few named Velious dragons, planar bosses, epic quest lines culminating in the point where I would routinely 'reserve' and start clearing PoGrowth solo which at the time no other class could do because of the then CC immune warders. For farming AAs I just grabbed whomever and adapted, I could pull, I could heal, I could tank (And hold solid agro off just about anyone who wasn't an SK), I could CC.

Druids weren't quite as extreme in what they could solo, but generally if they could snare/root it, it was farm status if it didn't death touch. Clerics were the closest to a heal only healer even if my guild's hammer wielding blue dorf army would have you think otherwise.

WoW is probably the main culprit of this mentality I guess. It's not that heal specced healers can't deal damage (I ran Ele/Resto Shaman in vanilla/bc and it generally took a decent level of coordination to get a handle on my antics in PvP), but rather it just wasn't worthwhile at least back when I played. But this wasn't at the expense of us doing anything else. Early on we were spam casting low level heals to stay efficient for longer encounters, at other points we were often handling various forms of CC or buffing/debuffing.

I'd have absolutely no problem if FFXIV flipped to a model where healers actually needed to *properly* focus on healing, but the people that keep screeching this never seem to understand that as things are, it would be truly horrific if this happened right now without some sweeping changes to accompany it. Once you start playing in a manner that's GCD efficient, you spend remarkably few GCDs actually healing. Take the filler in between these bursts of HPS away and currently we are left with almost nothing.

SE made all healer CC completely worthless

We have very little debuffing left in our kits

Our utility is currently pretty much limited to 'bursts' every 2 minutes be that a legitimate burst on AST or simply pressing a button as anyone else

So I propose to anyone who still feels to need to tell us that we need to stop DPSing. Tell us: What do we do instead?

The people pitching for the death of healer DPS would just tell you to "heal instead." Whatever that actually is meant to mean.