Healers need an overhaul

[IDontPetLalas]

healers: "waaaah muh dps"

you are a healer. heal.

if you want a dps, play... a dps...? it's not that hard, this is how it used to be back in the old days, considered COMMON SENSE for healers to HEAL and not outdps the actual dps classes.

and what is the DPS excuse if the healer is out DPSing them? I'm honestly curious on how you'd explain that, because if they are being healed through unavoidable damage, and otherwise not failing mechanics, can you explain how a healer is going to out _DPS them?

Can you point to anyone asking in future being able to out-dps any DPS? No, you can't.

Can I point to "old games" where a healing class can actually be competitive with a DPS class or job, why yes I can provide examples, so can other people, and we have in other threads on these forums. So there goes your "old days" argument- not that we are in the "old days" anymore. Coming from someone who has definitely been playing since the "old days" I can change with the times and with the context of the game that I am currently playing, times change, as do player communities.

[Raven2014]

So why do Tanks get a rotation if they aren't DPS? Get that double standard crap out of here.

Because DPS tie to their job? How do a tank "tank" a target? By keeping the boss on them. How do they keep the boss on them? By generating threat. How do they generating threat? By DPSing. How they can generate a lot of threat? By having high DPS!

In another word, DPS directly enhance the role of a tank. DPSing on a healer is the exact opposite of that, unless of course, you want to make every AOE acts like assize/macro and every single target heal act like Kardia?

Like ... seriously, this is not a rhetoric question, if anyone know there is any other MMO where the "main" role of a healer is DPS first, and healing is a distant second, tell me. I will definitely go check it out even briefly just to see how it's done. The issue with healer in this game went far beyond of being simply boring/exciting, it's outright an identity crisis.

[IDontPetLalas]

i don't see how it's a piss poor argument. there's not enough to heal for healers who know what they're doing, we completely agree on that point. as well as healers out-dpsing the actual dps not being the fault of the healers, thats on the dps. but we're operating under the assumption that the average healer knows exactly how to play their class "optimally" (???) and uses their full kit. the average healer usually doesn't, in my experience and likely many others considering i see more often people complaining about poor healers (not healing, not holy-ing, only using cure, not touching regen/medica/etc.) which is more often than not the reality. + when people go for advice on the "proper" way there's usually not a one size fits all cookie cutter template which should exist, it being... use your full kit. that and don't tank aoes. it's that simple, every healer should be told this at a beginning level.

many players also look for cast times or think that they need to be at 100 % all of the time. Or think that they can ignore mechanics, or that healers can ignore mechanics ( healer privilege does not exist sadly) or think that healing range is infinite. I could go on. Yes I absolutely agree that healers can make mistakes, but sometimes it's on the other people in the party as well.

[Silver-Strider]

Because DPS tie to their job? How do a tank "tank" a target? By keeping the boss on them. How do they keep the boss on them? By generating threat. How do they generating threat? By DPSing. How they can generate a lot of threat? By having high DPS!

In another word, DPS directly enhance the role of a tank. DPSing on a healer is the exact opposite of that, unless of course, you want to make every AOE acts like assize/macro and every single target heal act like Kardia?

That doesn't mean you need a rotation to pull that off. You could literally have 1 skill that builds Aggro and be fine. Back in the day, Tanks used Flash to get initial aggro, a skill that did 0 damage and it worked so this is a BS argument. It's a Double Standard and a bad one at that.

[NekoMataMata]

So why do Tanks get a rotation if they aren't DPS? Get that double standard crap out of here.

Last I checked but tanks have to grab aggro and maintain aggro. Damage skills are also a part of some tanks sustain. You can't really compare the two here.

But I understand. Judging by the aggressiveness of your posts here you just absolutely have to have a healer with a full DPS rotation don't you? You don't care about logic, you'll use whatever you can think of in your own arguments to get what you want at this point.

[Shurrikhan]

if anyone know there is any other MMO where the "main" role of a healer is DPS first, and healing is a distant second, tell me.

Unless said healing contributes as directly as possible to the party's dps... all of them?

Healing more than is needed for survival (or for a deliberate rDPS-increasing overextension) has never been the job of a healer.

Unless the encounter is one of the few not won by depleting enemy HP to zero (of which there are none in XIV), all healing has only ever been a means of dps -- and when that more efficient but bottlenecked means of increasing rDPS has hit its cap, healers switch back to direct contribution.

[Rolder50]

Last I checked but tanks have to grab aggro and maintain aggro. Damage skills are also a part of some tanks sustain. You can't really compare the two here.

But I understand. Judging by the aggressiveness of your posts here you just absolutely have to have a healer with a full DPS rotation don't you? You don't care about logic, you'll use whatever you can think of in your own arguments to get what you want at this point.

Like the other post said, you dont NEED a complicated DPS rotation to get aggro. Why, we should just take out all their DPS buttons except one, give them even MORE mitigation even if it's not needed, maybe throw in some pointless self heal skills too, boom we got the situation the healer role is in.

And besides, they could have Heals and DPS interact with each other. Like, what if Kardia on Sage wasn't a flat potency value but was instead something like "10% of all damage you do heals the Kardia target" or something like that? What if doing damage filled up the Lily gauge on White Mage? What if Scholar had an attack that put a debuff on the enemy, that caused allies to be healed when they strike the enemy? The possibilites are endless, but instead we get boring "Heal X on Y cooldown, maybe reduce damage taken for a bit" kind of heals that are just so, so tiresome.

[Raven2014]

That doesn't mean you need a rotation to pull that off. You could literally have 1 skill that builds Aggro and be fine. Back in the day, Tanks used Flash to get initial aggro, a skill that did 0 damage and it worked so this is a BS argument. It's a Double Standard and a bad one at that.

No it's not double standard. If that is your argument, then not even the DPS would need more than one button because they can DPS "just fine!". That is a silly take and you know it. Tank and DPS are fine because they don't have to worry about anyone else but themselves in a fight. Healers is the only role that watching other people are part of their jobs, hence they stand to suffer the most from having integrated distraction (like a DPS combo). Like ... seriously, this claim is as silly as someone who caught texting whilen driving saying "but you text to when sitting at your desk, take that double standard out of here!".

Jebrus, the combo itself isn't the problem here.


And before you claim that's not a problem with you, history had shown that's a problem for most of the average players, hence while Healer being what it is these days. The point is a rotation will always gonna introduce a distraction to some degree, depending on the skill of a player (that's why tunnel vision is a thing). But for a tank/DPS that does not distract from their main directive. A tank will lose nothing if he focus on his combo, a healer tunnel vision on their combo is a risk of someone else dying.

[MintnHoney]

Last I checked but tanks have to grab aggro and maintain aggro. Damage skills are also a part of some tanks sustain. You can't really compare the two here.

Except that they also provide an example of non-DPS skills being used, in the past, to generate and maintain aggro.
Furthermore, aggro maintenance is a non-issue thanks to the Squeen approved tank stance button, now in 4 flavors of the exact same thing.

A comparison actually can really happen here: Tanks were designed with the idea that their primary role shouldn't require their absolute focus on the one aspect of their gameplay, whereas healers were not.
And so, why is it that healers cannot be designed for the game they're being put into, and yet Tanks and DPS can?

The point is a rotation will always gonna introduce a distraction to some degree, depending on the skill of a player (that's why tunnel vision is a thing). But for a tank/DPS that does not distract from their main directive. A tank will lose nothing if he focus on his combo, a healer tunnel vision on their combo is a risk of someone else dying.

Actually, that's very incorrect.
If a tank tunnel visions on his DPS combo, but forgets to activate tank stance, that means they will very likely not maintain aggro. Furthermore, if they tunnel on their DPS, they could forget to use mitigation abilities. Which, often, in my experience, they do.

If a DPS tunnel visions, they could also forget to use their mitigation tools or self-sustain abilities. If a DPS tunnel visions, they could forget to do mechanics or not get out of AOEs in time and get OHKO'd. Which, often, in my experience, they do.

And yet, these are just "mistakes." And they're allowed to make these mistakes, because "reasons."
Meanwhile, healers are not allowed to make mistakes because "reasons."

[Silver-Strider]

Snip

I can absolutely compare the 2 because it doesn't take a genius to see very clear bias in job design.

Back in the day, Tanks had 1 innate skill for Generating Aggro, Flash for PLD and Overpower for WAR. Flash could be cross classed onto Warrior but that was the extent of their AoE potential. Later on, SE decided to give Tanks a 1-2 AoE combo. Healers didn't get that treatment. They just got shafted and skills removed because.....reasons (or lack there of).

I care about logic, I've just yet to hear anything logical about the argument. Every argument I've seen is so fragile it's practically a strawman.
"Healers will focus too much on DPS and not heal". BAD healers will do that and continue to do so even with a single DPS button so nothing changes whether you give them 1 or 100 DPS buttons.
"Just redesign content to make Healers need to heal more". 10 YEARS worth of content would need to be redesigned for that to be applicable. Simply designing more intensive heals for later content does not solve the problem of lower level content being painfully undertuned and considering how much time and effort it takes SE to design 1 Unreal Trial, I highly doubt that they'll ever go that route. Adding back the skills that healers have lost over the years is a quick and painless thing. They don't have to rebuild the game from the ground up, make new animations or anything because all that data still exists in the code.
"You just want more DPS" I WANT MY ROLE TO BE BETTER THOUGHT OUT! It's not just the DPS skills that they removed but literally everything that they removed from Healers. Why were skills like Divine Seal, Stoneskin, Virus and Disable removed from healers when all they did was support the party? Why were Eos and Selene turned into simple Glamour options? Why were AST's cards homogenized to do the same thing? Why does WHM have the worst leveling experience of all the healers, given that their spells cost more, have longer cast times, don't have any oGCD heals until HW, etc? I have a problem with ALL of this because not only does the healer role lack in terms of engaging DPS options but it just falls flat in every conceivable way in being a "support" role. RDM and DNC do a much better job at being actual Support Roles because they can do a little of everything, despite their primary focus being DPS but Healers? We're just there for a singular purpose apparently despite previous incarnations of the role being far better developed. So don't come at me with that "you just want more DPS" argument because it's simply not true at all.