Healer Q&A in PLL LXVIII

[Renathras]

The saying "you have clears without healers" means they were not needed for heals, making their healing contributions redundent and also in terms of enrage that just means healers are there to dps so basically 0 healing needed + must dps for enrage = green dps. So no matter content they are dispensible dps making the role feel the worse tnx to the data seeing devs.

Are those moving goalposts I hear?

Some content can be cleared without needing 2 healers. Some content can be cleared without needing DPS. I believe P1N has been cleared with all tanks - meaning DPS is not needed (apparently), and thus NO JOB is a "-insert color- DPS". After all, CLEARLY their DPS contribution is "redundant" in terms of enrage, right? Is that really the argument you want to make here?

Not to mention that there aren't many clears without healers of any current content AND it generally takes a coordinated group to clear content without healers. Not only that, ALL current content cleared without healers is cleared with tanks, generally more than the standard number though not always. If what you say is true, ALL content should be clearable with 8x DPS, yet we never really see that. Most 0 healer clears are things like 8 tank runs.

So that does not, in fact, mean "healers are there to dps".

It means healers are there to heal, and the content is tuned low enough that 8 tanks can clear it with no healers OR DPSers if they are coordinated and know what they're doing.

So they aren't "green DPS" and tanks aren't "blue DPS.

We have RED DPS in this game. Then we have Green Healers and we have Blue Tanks.

Everyone can - and should - throw damage when their other duties do not take priority. But if as a healer you need to cast a GCD heal, that is what you do. That is what takes priority. Because you are a Green HEALER, and your DPS is secondary to your healing. Just as a tank trying to maximize a burst window that doesn't perform a tank swap because "I'm doing my DPS!!!" is a bad tank, a healer that does the same with damage is a bad healer. They aren't "blue DPS" or "green DPS" in those cases: They're bad players.

[rewd]

Correct, under the current model. The current model isn't inherent to the game, as it was not the way the game always was. And no, the DEVS do not treat healers - not objectively, anyway - "as green DPS". And no, not "every job" is a "-insert colour- DPS". Red Jobs are DPS. If the others were DPS, they would be named DPS in the game and by the Devs. They are not.

Who decided the 'current' model? Did the playerbase once wake up and decide to point a gun at the devs' heads? Everything in this game revolves around DPS. You don't have to like it, but being delusional, arguing semantics and engaging in mental gymnastics to prove a point that is only in your head won't magically bring convincing arguments to you.

Rough percent of people that complete Savage raid tiers. Varies by tier, but around 1/8 players do so. Much of the playerbase doesn't complete Savage tiers. No content outside of Savage and Ultimate requires healer DPS to beat enrages. In fact, much of the content in the game doesn't even have enrages. Normal mode 8 mans don't have enrages. MSQ trials VERY rarely have enrages, and usually only for add phases before ultimate attacks, and when those do occur, they're extremely lenient. Extremes have enrages, but these are GENERALLY fairly lenient as well, and don't require healer damage in order to beat unless your DPS are bad. If your DPS Jobs are doing their role jobs, you can clear both Trial1 and Trial2 Ex in 570s without healers dealing any damage. As well as the bosses themselves.

Note that even some Savages are lenient here. P1S you can clear in 575 with no healer dps as long as the rest of your team is on point and your DPSers are doing their job.

Ok, so that's a meaningless percentage and also very inaccurate as it doesn't include people that cleared the tier and didn't get the mount. It also significantly underestimates the percentage of people that plays Savage but doesn't clear the tier.
Weren't you accusing Semirhage of being dismissive a few posts ago? Yet, here you are with your "only xy% thinks that anyway, I'm an omniscient being so I know a large part of the playerbase thinks exactly like ME." When you elevate yourself as a weird kind of healer spokesperson and throw some random numbers around, the conversation becomes meaningless because so are your arguments.

Also, you were talking about fallacies a few posts ago too, yet you fell victim of a rather funny fallacy yourself. In order to confute that "Devs do see healer DPS as a necessity because you need it to clear content", you don't use a single, random, instance to prove a point. Yes, P1S has a very lenient DPS check. Very surprising for the Savage entry point. What about P4S? Could you clear the tier with no healer DPS at all? If yes, healing DPS is indeed just a bonus and that 15% of the playerbase just lives in a collective delusion. If not, the devs objectively (sorry, no mental gymnastics can change this) see healer DPS as a necessity and as a fundamental part of the healer role.
I can use your "logic" and claim that tanks are not necessary in this game because I can clear Sastasha - as well as many other duties - with no tank at all.

Lastly, what does 'green DPS' actually even mean? Why does playing the role as intended in hard content and optimally in casual content gains me the 'green DPS' nickname? Why does griefing your party in hard content and playing sub-optimally (thus wasting people's time) in casual content grants someone the status of great defender of the honour and pride of the healer role? You can call me 'green DPS' if you wish. In return, you can be a Sylphie, not a healer.

[CrimsonGunner]

Nope ,changing goalposts mean to change a goal, in here it was never change the sad truth is the goal here to say "healers are not healers in ff 14".

Your trying to bend your logic so much ur almost a pretzel at this point.

1)To clear the content you MUST dps, there is no escape from it, tanks MUST DPS to gain agro right now its a fact, for dps its their job descriptions and both can not only self sustain where healers are not needed but also heal others to survive content and revive fallen ppl which means healers are not needed.

2) clears also have time conditions to clear, reach certain hp threshold before mech are done, kill adds before boss cast is over, or kill them before their cast is over meaning in terms of gcd any non damage gcd you burn increase the chance your group wont make it simple.the amount of gcds is limited and any gcd that helps damage output counts.

3) gcd healing punish a healer when used, u cant spam it. Cast cost too big, some u cant wave after cast so u can miss timing. Your ogcd makes up for contributions as well such as keep damage gcd cast, mp free, increase others dps.

You are basically fantasizing why gcd need to be used bit that will never be the first cast cause a healer job is contribute to success and gcd healing doesnt, take away any aspect in the healer role description is taken by tanks/dps in self healing/healing others and ressing and you get healers are either green dps or flat out useless/removable for a party basically

[CrimsonGunner]

If gcd healing were dps neutral or wont hinder, u can argue it needs to be used but the devs clearly not trying to test/design or even maintain the role by the lack of patch and fixes they needed througout expansions when they needed them most especially simple ones as mp costs reductions on gcd

[Beddict]

EDIT: Per FFXIV Collect, <10% have cleared P4S at the moment. Which is supposedly an "easy" Savage raid tier, to hear Savage raiders talk. P3S being a pita aside. I think we can be generous here and say 15-20% of people seriously raid Savage content. Looking at the Eden's Savage I clear achievements, they tend to look like around 20% consistently, if we consider that some clears have come since the level cap/ilevels were raised allowing easier clears for people going back to farm/etc. So 15-20% of people seriously clearing content, where these considerations actually matter, is probably pretty accurate. 60-80% of the population either doesn't do Savages or don't do them seriously to clear them. 60% as a floor, btw, would still be an easy majority of the player base. Fair enough?

To quote the FAQ on FFXIV Collect:

How are your ownership percentages calculated?

Ownership is calculated based on publicly available characters who have been updated on the site in the past 3 months and possess at least one collectable in a given category.

These percentages are not a reflection of the entire playerbase, but rather a subset of players who are interested in collecting things. If you are looking to collect competitively, then this is probably the data you want.

In addition, the amount of players actually using FFXIV Collect is tiny. Again, from the FAQ:

How many players are tracked by FFXIV Collect?

Users
86,314
Public Characters
230,033
Active Public Characters
85,500
Active Characters with Public Achievements
47,189

FFXIV Collect accounts for a small portion of the player base and only cares about people who have cleared the tier. Like rewd said, it can't tell you anything about people that are still progging the tier. The actual amount of players participating in Savage is going to be a hell of a lot higher than what FFXIV Collect shows, but only SE has the actual data and they ain't sharing it.

[Semirhage]

Everyone can - and should - throw damage when their other duties do not take priority. But if as a healer you need to cast a GCD heal, that is what you do. That is what takes priority. Because you are a Green HEALER, and your DPS is secondary to your healing. Just as a tank trying to maximize a burst window that doesn't perform a tank swap because "I'm doing my DPS!!!" is a bad tank, a healer that does the same with damage is a bad healer. They aren't "blue DPS" or "green DPS" in those cases: They're bad players.

Not that this argument is -ever- going to bed, because I see it rise from the void on a monthly basis, but good healers. Are aware. That you cast GCD healing spells. When necessary. This chicanery crops up every single time, and it's somehow no less exhausting. It's not as if top tier healers take their GCDs off their bar. They're just necessary so rarely in a halfway decent party that you don't press them. Because keeping people at 100% HP all the time is a waste of resources. It's not because Cure gives me hives. It's not because I immediately consign a party member to a dirtnap the moment I run dry on free heals. Healing in this game is boring. It'd be boring if you slightly raised outgoing damage. It'd be boring if you nerfed oGCDs. The healing kits are sleep aids. There's no skill to be gained in Cure 2. Cure 2. Cure 2. Cure 2. They've stripped debuffs away from the kits. WHM isn't -allowed- to have buffs. Cleanses see almost zero use. Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare is all that's left, and that's about two button prunes short of a walking simulator. If they added support, great. If they added interesting kit interactivity, even better. I don't play FFXIV to mash my 1 key like a preschooler. And I don't think *any* of the four healer jobs "deserves" to be cursed with such an awful excuse for gameplay. WHM is the only job in this game people CONSTANTLY advocate to play with zero depth, zero skill, zero fun allowed as intentional design, and it blows my mind. You're free to Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare away if the job gets actually well-designed in the future. Why design stupidification suddenly flips around to become a positive when it's WHM on the chopping block, I'll never know.

[ASkellington]

Everyone can - and should - throw damage when their other duties do not take priority. But if as a healer you need to cast a GCD heal, that is what you do. That is what takes priority. Because you are a Green HEALER, and your DPS is secondary to your healing. Just as a tank trying to maximize a burst window that doesn't perform a tank swap because "I'm doing my DPS!!!" is a bad tank, a healer that does the same with damage is a bad healer. They aren't "blue DPS" or "green DPS" in those cases: They're bad players.

Here's where you're arguement falls, allow me to quote myself:

as an AST I have:

Horoscope, Neutral Sect, Celesital Opposition, Collective Unconciousness, (the occasional) Lady of Crowns, Macrocosmos and Earthly Star for oGCD AOE heals, (6-7)
2 charges of Essential Dignity and Celestial Intersection each and Exaltation for oGCD single target heals (5)
Synastry (which WHEN WILL YOU UPGRADE THIS SKILL TO BE USED FOR EXALT/ED/CI OR SCRAP IT ALL TOGETHER?)

With Benefic 2 (and one if you want to go there), Aspected Benefic, Helios and Aspected Helios for GCD single target and AOE abilities respectively (4)

Moving Macrocosmos to GCD heals and ignoring Neutral as it is a buff augment FOR GCD heals that is a total of 9-10 (because occassional Lady) oGCD heals that I am going to burn through first before I touch a single GCD heal aside from Macrocosmos and A. Benefic.

The ONLY healer that is strictly GCD healing past 50 is WHM and that is because lilies aren't oGCD.

We. Don't. GCD. Heal. Unless. We. Have. To.

Why is that so hard to understand? Our oGCDs come up so often (Exaltation comes up before every TB in all EW content it has access to actually and CI WELL before it) that we don't need to dip into our GCDs unless everything is down. And everything isn't going to be down unless people mess up (which, we do account for) because everything is scripted (enough for me to point out I'll next to always have Exal or CI for a tank buster - every 40 or 60+ seconds).

Healing is secondary to DPS because the fight design MADE it secondary to DPS when I can literally press a single button and not have to worry about another raidwide until said button is up. Or... y'know use the other 3 buttons available to me that essentially do the same damn thing. Which means I am going to be spamming Malefic upwards to 90% of a fight because my oGCDs are both powerful and frequent enough to handle most damage and I know that, and I'm going to do that instead of wasting a GCD on A. Helios when I could Celestial Opposition, Collective Unconciousness, Lady of Crowns, Horoscope or Earthly Star instead.

Whether you like it or not, that is a sign of a good healer.

Its always been a sign of a good healer: using your CDs properly.

In FFXIV that means barely GCD heal, spend your GCDs on DPS instead.

And before anyone says it, that does not mean you'll never GCD heal. It just means it is never your priority unless you have nothing else, your LAST RESORT.

[Dhalya]

FFXIV WAS designed originally with more healing (RELATIVE TO our healing kits). It was designed for healers to use GCD heals. Remember at level 50 (ARR's level cap), WHM had exactly ONE oGCD heal, Benediction, an emergency panic button. SCHs had only one direct oGCD heal, Lustrate (it also had WD, but that wasn't up front healing.)

ARR was designed with GCD healing in mind and a higher amount of outgoing damage over shorter, more frequent times than today. So was HW. Both Coils and Alex were not designed like modern fights. We did have fairly large and relatively frequent unavoidable damage.

I am not sure how much more healing there was in ARR, if you have tried the unreal trials in ShB, those could be similarly healed with oGCDs tho I agree Leviathan ex did have some nasty random stuff happening.

Anyway I don't see that huge of a difference between GCD and oGCD healing, so you do
glare > glare > glare+tetra > glare > glare > glare+assize > glare > dia
or
stone > stone > cure > cure2 > stone > medica 2 > medica > aero,
just at a much slower pace and dealing less damage, is it more engaging or fun? I don't think so.

Also I think your perception of the past is wrong just because back then players mentality was different. Parsing wasnt so popular, the game was new so people just focused on mechanics and dps was secondary, dps checks were lighter and people still struggled to meet them because they sucked at doing big deeps, healers spam healing just to be safe. I even remember the trend of 'main healer' and 'off-healer' who would just spam damage (which is extremely suboptimal when you do the math) so yeah, it took time for people to over-optimize everything to maximum and now they are bored as they have been spamming the same formula for years and the number of offensive abilities has actually been reduced since ARR.

[Silver-Strider]

Anyway I don't see that huge of a difference between GCD and oGCD healing, so you do
glare > glare > glare+tetra > glare > glare > glare+assize > glare > dia
or
stone > stone > cure > cure2 > stone > medica 2 > medica > aero,
just at a much slower pace and dealing less damage, is it more engaging or fun? I don't think so.

There was a lot more to it than that, I can assure you.
For starters, Protect was on the GCD and was absolutely mandatory to have on. While it did last for 30 minutes, you'd have to reapply it if someone died so they at least stood a chance of not getting killed immediately to the next raid wide because Weakness back then wasn't just a damage down to your DPS stats but a full on stat reduction across the board, meaning you had less health to survive damage as well. It was particularly true of DRGs because Physical and Magic damage was not standardized so each class took different amounts of damage, depending on if an AoE attack was physical or magic based but DRG's had PITIFUL magic resistance and would topple over almost every magical AoE unless they had Protect and maybe a Shield for good measure. Tank busters actually hurt like no one's business because enemies could actually CRIT you; At minimum ilvl, if you didn't have a Shield up on top of Mitigation, if you got Crit, you were dead. Then, you had Prey Mechanics that absolutely required you to shield people in order to survive them at all. Couple that with the fact WHM's MP economy being even worse than it currently is and that SCH's AoE healing was essentially limited to Succor and healing was legitimately more involved back then than it is now. There was MP to manage, Tank busters to shield, Cleric Stance Dancing to squeeze in DPS whenever possible, semi frequent raid wide damage.

It was fun though. Stressful as hell but it was always great when you pulled it off.

Nowadays, I sit and spam Glare for the majority of the fight. No shields to keep up, no prey mechanics to watch for, no tank buster too powerful to OHKO tanks, no Cleric Stance Dancing to optimize my DPS, nothing.

[Semirhage]

What's always driven me mad about the "no, don't fix downtime! Just make healing happen more" line of thought is that it completely misses some fundamental truths about healing that ultimately mean it doesn't solve the problem. Absent an unorthodox system that rewards healing throughput for whatever reason, healing is nearly always a waste of time. No, really. Yes, if you need a party member to survive the next X seconds, it's what you need to do. It's the most important thing you can do at that moment, in fact. Healing is paradoxically both the first priority you learn as a healer and the last thing you want to do once you know more about how to play your job.

Think about it. It's an action that requires that you expend resources (whether that be MP or a cooldown). It requires that you spend time, one of the scarcest, most precious resources in FFXIV, on it (this is crucially true if it's a GCD, less so oGCD). I'd compare it to a turn-based combat game because the GCD is so long that you may consider it as essential to conserve time as you would save a turn. All of those costs and attendant opportunity costs are tied to performing this action, and it'd better do something beneficial. If that character is going to die next turn, then it is. You've conserved countless future turns for your party. If not? Maybe you couldn't get to healing their next turn and thought ahead; I dunno. Because healing is one of the only activities that doesn't contribute to furthering the encounter. It's an activity that's best served outside the heat of combat if you can manage it. You could have just killed the thing attacking your party, which is far more damage prevention than simple healing. You could have stunned it, which in some ways is just as good as killing it. You could have silenced it and reduced the hell out of available options your enemy had to attack you. You could have strategically teleported it away. You could have hit it hard enough to scare it into wasting time performing its own triage instead of attacking your party.

Healing is the most important thing you can do. Until it isn't. Then it's among the least important things you can do. This is where downtime comes in. Because it's so important when the combat makes it essential, you have to give lower-skilled players a buffer to complete their task before the party member dies. Said buffer doesn't need to be anywhere near as large as it is in FFXIV, but it's still there even in games with far higher healing requirements. Downtime will always, always, always be the thing players spend large portions of their time on. It's because healing is among the most useless activities -by definition-, most of the time.

You need to sleep in order to survive. It's one of the most important things you can do. You'll die unless you don't. Should we try sleeping as often as we can? Why not? Is it because the activity is essential when required, and otherwise a useless waste of your time that you could fill with an infinite number of more productive things?

Healing is like sleeping. Or eating. Some people need to do it more than others. Nobody needs to do it even close to 100% of the time. Leaving downtime activities in a boring state is unacceptable. Increasing your downtime is the healing success state. A reward for success should never be tedium.