Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Punslinger]

Sure these cases don't matter for statics and fights you know like the back of your hand, but until they change it, you have to balance for all content and all players.

Precisely, which is why it's weird that so much of the game's content is tuned to be doable without healers at all. Tanks have enough self-sustain that 1 Tank + 3 DPS parties are viable in dungeons. All-tank 24-mans have been a thing forever. E4S was clearable without healers when it was current. P1S and P2S are clearable without healers. UCoB has been cleared without healers.

And the MSQ is such a huge chunk of the game's content that it's genuinely mind-boggling why healers have only two DPS buttons to use from level 4 to level 90. Back during SB, I leveled SAM as an alt job specifically for the MSQ, because Malefic-spamming my way through SB was putting me to sleep by level 62.

Healers should be necessary and engaged in all content. They shouldn't just be fun only in Savages or Ultimates, or only if you get a party of glue-huffing five-year-olds in DF. 95% of their kit shouldn't be useless in the MSQ, which they'll spend dozens of hours playing through.

SE didnt create the damage meta though, the players did.

This is provably false with some simple logic.

Given: A healer GCD can be spent on damage or healing, or doing nothing.
Given: All EX/Savage/Ult bosses have enrage timers, hard-capping the number of possible GCDs.
Given: Increased damage is always useful, because it makes the boss die faster.
Given: Healing is capped by health bars not going past 100%.

Conclusion: GCDs are a scarce resource. DPS is a more efficient use of a GCD than healing. DPS is therefore incentivized over healing by the game design. Rational healers will try to minimize the number of GCDs spent on healing and maximize the number spent on DPS.

This has nothing to do with Gordias, and nothing to do with players "forcing" uber-l337 meta 1% speedrun strats on people. It is simple logic and economics.

I dont think you should be picking healer to DPS. Yes, the amount of DPSing you do should be fun, but it also should come secondary to the healing responsibilities of the healer role.

Now do tanks.

[ASkellington]

SE didnt create the damage meta though, the players did. If you look back in history, damage has been the name of the game since Gordias, where the DPS check of specifically Faust was so intense that people were having their healers DPS just to help. From then on it was on a path that couldn't change back.

Rumors become stated facts that spread like wildfire. If you were a tank not in STR gear or not tanking in OT stance, you were bad. If you were a healer not DPSing, you were bad. If you GCD'd as a healer, you were bad. These aren't made up, and were real stigmas that took root back in HW. Then there was the fact that SE did NOT want to enforce healer DPS, as they knew it was a point of contention till they accepted the communities desire to be green DPS in ShB. Though in order to try to appease both the people who wanted to DPS and those that didnt as a healer, they made the DPS simple and approachable so there wasnt a main deterrent from their main job of being a healer.

Y'all can keep playing the victim card and shake in your boots at Big Bad Yoshi no wanting fun, but where healers are now is a by product of a thought process that started in HW and one that the dev team is still trying to get right. Yes, we all feel sorry for every person who chooses a healer and I commend then every instance cause it must be rough.

Here is the healer debate summed up in one neat little post:

Healers: Healing isn't engaging for midcore to veteran healers.

Why?

Healers: We have nothing to do.

Well, you have something to do if the party is bad.

Healers: What about when the party is good?

Well you have a good healing tool kit.

Healers: That we barely use because the fights are undertuned in healing requirements. Can we get more healing?

That would make it too hard for newer healers.

Healers: Even in Extremes and Savage?

"Go do Ultimate." (which I will point out here we keep getting told to go do harder content when harder content STILL DOESN'T PUSH US)

Healers: Can we have more to do in our down time when we aren't healing (buff/debuff/more damage buttons)?

Meaningful buffs/debuffs would require an overhaul of how the game works, or there are too many buttons you have already, or if you wanted to do damage go play a dps (take your pick I've heard all three).

Healers: But other healers in other games have decent downtime activities (or more healing requirements so downtime and healing uptime are better balanced).

Go play that game then.


Did I miss anything else?

We've done this song and dance over and over and over. I personally have only done this for what? Maybe 2 years+? Others have been doing it for longer. This "victim card" you proclaim is offensive when we have valid complaints.

Edit: And I'd like to add it isn't JUST the devs telling us this either. The player base does as well. Some, who don't seem to understand: what we mean, how the game is actually played, how midcore to veteran to top tier healers play, and seem to think we're whining just to whine.

We want more out of our job like DRKs do, like SMNs do, like MCH do, and like MNK did last expansion. But because we're healers we aren't allowed to get it and get to run through the same arguments over and over. Give us something to heal then! ...Oh WAIT. (see the above)

[Maltothoris]

Which, it’s my understanding that healers still contributed to damage in ARR, so its not like healer DPS is some kind of new phenomenon that came to be in HW; and, before, healers just stood around waiting for damage.

There was always that argment even back in the day in Binding Coil. However you had the excuses of the clunkiness of cleric stance and accuracy being the main obstacles back then for healers not wanting to dps.

Indeed it was actually in 2.3 when healers started to do damage when Second Coil Savage came out. The issues with hose fights were that the bosses had more hp and did more damage. In order to survive tyhe damage since even being in bis gear couldn't help with that, was they crafted accessories and melded full right side vit on all of them. SInce this was a loss of damage they had to look for other sources of damage to meet the enrage timers. You can see quite a few of the second coil savage videos where schs were doing a decent of dps at the time.

Then Final Coil came out and you had three groups that cleared the Monday before reset when it was beaten in 1 week. I even remember Yoshi-P saying that he was livid that Phoenix was cleared on that Friday when it first came out. Saying they underestimated the strength of crafted gear and that there was a growing voice of people wanting harder raids. Of course, this lead to the disaster that was Gordias and how if I recall, he said the test team couldn't even beat A3S and A4S normally before it was released.

[IdowhatIwant]

1) Give healers higher DPS, comparable to tanks. It just isn't fair right now when RDM and SMN can heal and rez and still do comparable DPS to physical DPS. I know the devs don't want to obviate tank roles, but that shouldn't mean totally gimping an entire role to do it. Make healers a tad squishier or give them some movement limitations so that they can't totally replace tanks, but at least let them do damage if that is what they are doing 90 percent of the time.

I disagree with 1. Healers should not be a DPS role they should be a support role. They should be there to heal and buff the party. If you feel like playing a dps with light heals and rez then go play one of those casters.

I think healer design first needs to be tweeked to be less homogenized. I think tanks need to be address as the mitigation and self healing is out of control. A tank can mitigate damage every 24 seconds, when you used to need an actual cool down rotation for an entire fight let alone a trait that just reduces the damage they take by 20%. And finally the content itself needs to be designed with more thought. The raids are so bad anymore its basically a long dance of mechanics with a dps check attached. There is very little thought that needs to go into clearing savage any more other than pick a spot in the circle or pick group 1 or 2 for stacks.

I also think all of the dps aoe defensive cds should be removed. A self heal or a self defensive cd is fine.

I highly doubt these things will happen with the direction the game has been going and with the way a good portion of the community feels about the game being to difficult already.

[Absurdity]

I think tanks need to be address as the mitigation and self healing is out of control. A tank can mitigate damage every 24 seconds, when you used to need an actual cool down rotation for an entire fight let alone a trait that just reduces the damage they take by 20%.

Except that mitigation is actually taken into account by the fight design and planning your cooldowns over the fight is still a thing. Take the end of Act 1 in P4S for example, Near/Farsight and Demigod Double are not survivable with just 1 cooldown in minimum ilvl gear.

I got flattened by Demigod with just Nebula up (and both tanks stacking) and that was at ~ilvl 593.

They also happen less than 25 seconds apart from each other so you can't just Rampart + HoC the Near/Farsight and then Nebula + HoC the Demigod because HoC comes up around the time that the damage snapshots. (technically you can use HoC on both but the timing is tight)
Now I could invuln the Demigod but that leaves me without an invuln for Heartstake in Act 3, the arguably more annoying buster, and it will happen again during Finale anyway.


Is it difficult? No, but it still requires you to properly plan your mitigation for the fight, especially when you want to mitigate more than just busters as a tank.

[Banriikku]

Regardless of "Healer gets dps options" or "buff/debuff" the devs need to change something. And while they at it please implement a proper tutorial. Thanks.
By the way, if you saying "healer should heal" this would change the fights (meaning:ALL BATTLE CONTENT) in its core - you know that ? I am all in but are you people, that ask this, really up for this change ?

[ASkellington]

Regardless of "Healer gets dps options" or "buff/debuff" the devs need to change something. And while they at it please implement a proper tutorial. Thanks.
By the way, if you saying "healer should heal" this would change the fights (meaning:ALL BATTLE CONTENT) in its core - you know that ? I am all in but are you people, that ask this, really up for this change ?

We healers know the answer to that.

I don't think non-healers do.

[IDontPetLalas]

I disagree with 1. Healers should not be a DPS role they should be a support role. They should be there to heal and buff the party. If you feel like playing a dps with light heals and rez then go play one of those casters.

I think healer design first needs to be tweeked to be less homogenized. I think tanks need to be address as the mitigation and self healing is out of control. A tank can mitigate damage every 24 seconds, when you used to need an actual cool down rotation for an entire fight let alone a trait that just reduces the damage they take by 20%. And finally the content itself needs to be designed with more thought. The raids are so bad anymore its basically a long dance of mechanics with a dps check attached. There is very little thought that needs to go into clearing savage any more other than pick a spot in the circle or pick group 1 or 2 for stacks.

I also think all of the dps aoe defensive cds should be removed. A self heal or a self defensive cd is fine.

I highly doubt these things will happen with the direction the game has been going and with the way a good portion of the community feels about the game being to difficult already.

And I disagree with you. as a healer I'm not there to patch every little boo-boo and keep everyone healed to full all of the time. That may well apply to other games, however in this game, I'm here to support heal where needed which is a very different thing, apply buffs in those healing jobs that can,, AND DPS.

Stop throwing in that tired "if you want to be a DPS , play one", at this point it's akin to becoming an insult. No one has advocated for that.

[SeverianLyonesse]

And I disagree with you. as a healer I'm not there to patch every little boo-boo and keep everyone healed to full all of the time. That may well apply to other games, however in this game, I'm here to support heal where needed which is a very different thing, apply buffs in those healing jobs that can,, AND DPS.

Stop throwing in that tired "if you want to be a DPS , play one", at this point it's akin to becoming an insult. No one has advocated for that.

Agreed on this point and with Kasumi. FFXIV, by design, is DPS-oriented. With every expansion it moves more and more toward "action RPG" because that is what is more intuitive for new players to pick up easily than managing a lot of esoteric abilities. And all of the content has been designed around that since, what, Stormblood?

The green DPS is not going away. Anyone advocating for "healers should heal" (those arguing solely on this fundamental principle, not in combination with other changes/fixes to the role) should just play another game. FFXIV is too far gone.

[Liam_Harper]

I disagree with 1. Healers should not be a DPS role they should be a support role.

Dps is support. It's always useful. Your primary responsibility is to heal, but if your group isn't dying, you're supporting them by adding additional damage.

It's also funny how you contradict yourself. You say that tanks need looking at because their mitigation is out of control. By your logic however, tanks should only have mitigation and self heal, because they're there to tank and take hits and if you want to deal damage go play melee.

You also complain changes won't happen because the community feels the game is too difficult, but at the same time you want to rip utility from dps and make them more braindead and turn healers into curebots.