Helare shortage in PF: what would bring you back?

[Corbeau]

HPS was worth tracking in WoW because damage was constant. There were damage spikes, raidwides, tankbusters, and all that stuff as well, but there was constant ambient damage designed into all the fights. Further, some of it was avoidable - most WoW fights have a ton of non-lethal mechanics that just make the healers' lives slightly harder every time someone messes up. And someone will, inevitably, be messing up given that WoW requires 20 players for Mythic raids. That meant attritional damage was both omnipresent and slightly unpredictable in target.

You can't do this with XIV's UI. You can clearly see the base healer kits being designed like a basic WoW kit (this is where freecure comes from, for example), but the lack of mouseovers and desire to not disadvantage controllers means you just cannot do the degree of target-swapping heals that a WoW fight requires. Imagine all the worst of AST burst phases on controller except it's all the time.

Since ambient damage was stacked on top of stuff like raidwides, healer "burst phases" were absolutely a thing. You had to line up multiplicative cooldowns or the raid would keel over - and you often had to do this on the fly, adaptively, because of how variable incoming damage was based on 20 people making small mistakes. And you couldn't just save your cooldowns for emergencies, because you'd run out of mana due to the efficiency loss. The result was something far more dynamic than XIV, that heavily rewarded understanding the (much deeper) class kits in order to find the correct place on the efficiency-vs-output spectrum under changing circumstances. HPS was thus useful since high HPS (in theory) meant you'd manage to maximize output without running out of mana due to useless overhealing. It was a genuine indicator of skill, though no more the end-all-be-all than DPS parses are for DPS classes.

While I don't mind the lack of mana as a resource in XIV, I do mind the lack of dynamism. XIV uses DPS loss, and thus potentially dying to enrage, as a punishment for overhealing rather than the WoW experience of running out of MP and watching the raid die to ambient damage. That in itself is fine. What's not fine, and what made me drop raid healing in this game, is the shallowness of the kits and the static nature of the fights. Individual mistakes are vastly more lethal in XIV, offering much less chance for recovery. Since recovery barely matters, kits don't bother with the multiplicative healing tools that facilitate drastic output changes. Without WoW's dynamic damage it's just another case of spreadsheet-planning your extremely limited buttons to the dance and repeating them every pull - except you somehow plan even less buttons to press as peoples' gear improves. That's just playing a DPS but worse in every way - so why would I put myself through that?

[Absurdity]

as for whether i'd want those support buffs back, if the dps cant remember to feint or addle, i don't want to trust my MP economy to them either

It somewhat worked with Bard and Machinist for the simple reason that their TP/MP regens were also their enmity dump skills. You could rely on them casting those regularly because they'd get flattened otherwise...until you got a phys ranged that did so little dps that they never even got close to the tanks in enmity, but in content where you actually needed the TP/MP regen you would boot those from the party anyway.

[Renathras]

It never fails. Every time. "You're not REAL healers! You're just DPS players in disguise looking for quick clears! The people still attracted to the role are the REAL healers!"

I've played healers/support in games for decades. d e c a d e s. I've played them in single player RPGs. I've played them in tabletop RPGs. Doing the math, my D&D/Pathfinder rap sheet has me playing Clerics and Oracles in just under 75% of them. Seventy-five. I've played support in all but one MMO I've picked up over the years, and that's in the double digits (and is counting FFXIV, where I healed for more expansions than I haven't).

I've had just about every single Sylphie traipsing through these forums either directly accuse or imply that I'm not a Real Healer (tm) when I or someone else here has the temerity to state that we think spamming CureMedica and having the most simplistic damage rotation outside a mobile idle game isn't good game design.

I've quite possibly played healers longer than you've been alive. Not a real healer. Get OVER yourself.

It never fails, every time, you with a caricature and possibly the worst takes on this forum.

I get you REALLY want to play a Support and not a Healer and REALLY want to not get called out on it, but I've been playing Healers since I started playing games in the 80s. If you've got me beat, it's not by much. Decades here, too. d e c a d e s. Single player RPGs, tabletop, MMOs, MUDs, D&D, you name it, I've probably either healed in it or its contemporaries. I think I've played a non-healer in ONE D&D game run. Meaning my percentage is likely higher than yours - nice try at the purist flex on me, though.

And it's a good thing I'm not a Sylphie then, isn't it? Not to mention no one's getting on to you over you saying spamming Cure/Medica is sucky. Because (a) that isn't how healing in the game works and (b) that's not what you're attacking. If you actually engaged on the ACTUAL healing model we have here, not your caricature of both it and of healer players you don't like, then maybe you'd get less flack and more serious conversations.

Further, it's not an INSULT to point out someone doesn't really want to heal. Get over YOURself.

EDIT:

You've been calling out hyperbole, but I don't understand what the problem is. You've used hyperbolic examples as well. There's nothing wrong with using it. It's just another device for trying to communicate your thoughts. If anything it just displays how passionately people feel about these issues. People are reasonably frustrated as these are arguments that have been going on for 6+ years at this point.

I DO try to avoid it. The problem with hyperbole is that there's a level to show trends and then there's the "make up something that either never happens or so rarely happens as to make no difference". I challenge you to find ONE healer in any max level content that, completely of their own volition (e.g. you didn't pay or dare them to do it) goes through an entire 4 man, 8 man, or 24 man casting Cure 1 and nothing else. One Savage fight. One Extreme. ANYTHING.

It DOES. NOT. EXIST. and we all know it. Meaning it's a 100% pointless canard that distracts from any actual or serious discussion. Arguing against boogiemen only works when at least some version of them actually exists in a realistic sense, and the Cure 1 spamming Sylphie probably doesn't exist past level 30 in low level dungeons (where it legitimately could not matter less), if even that far.

You've been one of the more rational people here, surely you can see how fruitless it is. It ends up being a punching bag for people that want to act better than someone, but the punching bag doesn't really even exist. And for all the people saying "YEAH IT DOES!! I SAW LIKE THREE OF THEM ONE DAY!!!" the game has 3,000,000+ players. Would you like to do the math on what 3 out of that is in percent terms and then look up the definition of statistically insignificant?

I would like to have actual discussions about the state of healing and healers - and the game as a whole - and what can be done with them to make it all better, but that's impossible with people who want to attack "Sylphies" for all of their woes. It's skapegoating at best, and complete insanity at worst. And the best part is, it literally fixes nothing to do, and doesn't make the people doing it sound any more legitimate to anyone who doesn't already lockstep agree with them. Meaning you can get no ACTUAL change from doing it. It's just a venting at some "Other" to blame for your problems, AND it prevents you from listening or being open to some solutions that might actually get you at least some of what you want. That whole "cut off your nose to spite your face" thing. Schadenfreude, but completely worthless.

Inanity, thy name is...

Yeah, not even going to bother this time.

Something doesn't add up here...

By the definition of this forum, I'm not a "Sylphie" because I don't only cast Cure 1.

it's because their argument crumbles at the slightest poke of logic, so they just revert to the 'no true scotsman' fallacy

No, that's you.

Those on the other side argue for healers to have a more heal focus, and enjoy fights that require more healing. When the people complaining healing is "too easy/boring" then complain about having to cast GCD heals, the first obvious conclusion (Ocham's Razor) is that they don't actually want to cast heals. Or, at least, none that take away from their damage.

How do you classify a person who wants to deal damage more than they want to heal?

It's not even an INSULT. When I say someone wants to Tank, that's not an insult to them. The game needs Tanks. When I say someone would rather play a Support role, that's not an insult to them. It's an implicit statement that the game really needs a fourth role that IS a dedicated Support. It's not a purist argument, it's a "if a person doesn't really WANT to heal, or do much healing, then it's logical to say they aren't really inclined as healers and MIGHT just prefer another role". If your goal is to optimize damage - and NO, that's not optimizing healing just because the latter is required to do the former does not mean they're the same thing, just as one must crack open an egg to cook scrambled eggs, but one may also crack open an egg to make cookies with it as an ingredient - then it is fair to note that you might be ill content on a Job or role focused mostly on healing.

It's not an attack.

It's not an insult.

Pretending it is too play the victim or try to veer off into an attack - when the people doing it were ALREADY attacking others so it was a counter to their own aggressiveness - is not somehow beyond the pale.

I mean, quite literally, I saw ARR healing being used as an argument on this forum.

God, you're horrible.

You mean when people were insisting ARR had more damage spells and everyone was Cleric Stance dancing in a frenetic DPS race as healers and I pointed out that was false using actual videos of raiders at the time? When other people were appealing to ARR, you were fine with that because you thought it supported your position, and then I showed you it was false and all of a sudden, mentioning ARR healing was somehow backwards and not important to the conversation when it no longer supported your position?

God you're the worst...

It would also help to be a little less pedantic instead of going "You can't ACKSHUALLY AFK or you fail mechanics!!111 Hyperbole!!!!111" and derailing every single thread into a personal battleground by making it about this fallacy and that fallacy. It can't be that difficult to read between the lines and get the meaning.

Maybe I wouldn't need to bee "pedantic" if you people would stop mentioning the thing that you ALL KNOW ISN'T TRUE AND DOESN'T EXIST?

Seriously, what's the point bringing it up in EVERY thread when we all know it's going to derail the thread and we ALL know it's not even true?

If it's not true and someone is trying to make some "meaning" what is that meaning? Because these people seem to be serious. Hell, you even said in your post that Sylphies are in Savage runs. And Sylphies are defined as people that Cure 1 spam for Jesus and do literally nothing else by this forum. So it's not a Sylphie you're having issue with, it's a Kryle or something.

Even your Sylphie example wasn't casting Cure 1 and nothing else, and you didn't include any data, but I'd wager if you weren't clearing the fight, you had a lot of people dying to random stuff. You realize healers can't heal people who are being one-shot, right? Maybe it wasn't the GCD healer that was your problem.

And if you quit PF healing, then...I guess when healing gets easier after this tier, you can just look in a mirror when asking why SE made it easier again.

Speaking of skill ceiling. Would people be interested in the TP and MP system making a return?

Yes, actually. Might as well at this point and it'd be nice for DPSers to be the ones that aren't boring and coddled. I might actually consider playing a DPS Job if it wasn't so boring and coddled and braindead.

Yes, you are right. They don't appy since the topic of this thread is about PF. I'm not good at reading, so maybe the PF in this thread means PF which exludes parties aiming for practice because practice parties in PF do not count as PF. Right

But your PF certain do apply. because it's convienient

In addition to the hyperbole and caricatures, this is the main problem with this forum - the abject cherry picking to make their point SOMEhow still valid, even when it's shown to not be valid. The inability of people who just KNOW they MUST be right to recognize when they just MIGHT be wrong, and to try and spin being shown data indicating they're wrong to it somehow not counting and them still being right OR the new data not mattering (see the discussion about ARR healers supposedly being hyper-DPSers with tons of DPS buttons and Cleric Stance dancing, often brought up in this forum, as suddenly not important and a person being "stuck in the past" when said person uses actual videos from the time to prove that wasn't true while these folks also persist in insisting it was still true at the very end of ARR when everyone overgeared the content and thus must have always been true, players were just "bad" before then, etc.)

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

You're severely misinformed if you think "Sylphies" only means "healers that only cast Cure I" anywhere.

Heck, even Sylphie Sweetwind isn't necessarily bad. I'll take her over any of those labelled as "Sylphie" into my party. At least she wants to learn & grow, as a CNJ nonetheless.

[ty_taurus]

It never fails, every time, you with a caricature and possibly the worst takes on this forum.

I get you REALLY want to play a Support and not a Healer and REALLY want to not get called out on it, but I've been playing Healers since I started playing games in the 80s. If you've got me beat, it's not by much. Decades here, too. d e c a d e s. Single player RPGs, tabletop, MMOs, MUDs, D&D, you name it, I've probably either healed in it or its contemporaries. I think I've played a non-healer in ONE D&D game run. Meaning my percentage is likely higher than yours - nice try at the purist flex on me, though.

And it's a good thing I'm not a Sylphie then, isn't it? Not to mention no one's getting on to you over you saying spamming Cure/Medica is sucky. Because (a) that isn't how healing in the game works and (b) that's not what you're attacking. If you actually engaged on the ACTUAL healing model we have here, not your caricature of both it and of healer players you don't like, then maybe you'd get less flack and more serious conversations.

Further, it's not an INSULT to point out someone doesn't really want to heal. Get over YOURself.

I can see that you like to separate the concept of what a support is and what a healer is, but the game design industry as a whole sees support and healer as synonymous and regularly interchanges the role. I mentioned Xenoblade 3 in one of the other threads... That game has 3 combat roles, which are verbatim: Attacker, Defender, and Healer. The starting Healer that the game presents you with is the Medic Gunner. Each class has 5 artes, and these are the Medic Gunner's:

Myopic Screen - Ether Attack (basically magic) with a power multiplier of 200%
- Inflicts Daze on Toppled targets (Xenoblade has this system of basically stunning enemies where you inflict Break, then Topple to stun, and Daze basically extends that stun duration.)

Group Heal - AoE heal around the user with a power multiplier of 180%

Power Ring - AoE field around the user that increases attack power for those that stand in it.

Ether Cannon - Ether Attack with a power multiplier of 330%
- Inflicts accuracy down on the target.

Vortex - AoE Ether Attack around the user with a power multiplier of 240%
- Heals nearby allies when the art hits up to 100% of the user's healing power.

This was what the developers of Xenoblade 3 deemed was the example of the introductory healer to the game. Yes, it's a different game than FFXIV, and yes, it's just one example. But that is what modern gaming views as a healer. Every RPG I have played has followed a similar mentality with its design. I think trying to tell someone that they don't actually like healers; they like supports, isn't a very kind way to approach this disconnect in perspective, because by in large, most RPG players would disagree and think you're arguing semantics. I am a healer player. I want to play as a healer. I also want my healer to have an engaging set of tools that keep me involved with doing damage, healing the party, and providing utility. When I do play as a healer, I try to maximize my damage output while mitigating incoming attacks and healing the party as needed. That makes me a healer player.

In regards to pointing out if someone doesn't want to heal, I really don't think you're the one who gets to decide whether or not others want to heal. It's not a very fair thing to tell someone that they don't' actually want to heal and they just want to be green DPS. The issue isn't not wanting to GCD heal on principle, it's that this game has been designed in a direction where GCD healing is just your worst and most inefficient source of healing because of the opportunity cost baggage it comes with. It's not worth the loss of damage when you have so many other options to choose from. It's not worth the MP costs when you can heal more for no MP and do damage at the same time. The lilies are a fantastic break away from that, but they're limited in their use and accessibility.

[Rilifane]

Only a few days ago, I said to a friend that I'm pretty sure if someone said "I quit PF healing" they reaction from Ren would be "Then the consequences next tier are on YOU!".
My crystal ball works flawlessly. I'm officially a seer.

Keep thinking that it's our duty to do something with our limited free time that we don't enjoy to hopefully, maybe, possibly send the right message - or not and then we just wasted several months doing something we don't enjoy.
I find it hilarious that you're seriously telling us to spend our free time on something we don't enjoy and then try to shift the blame to us for not doing it if SE decided to nerf damage again. It's not like a huge gaming company has the option to find out why healer shortage still exists, eh? Nah, definitely the veteran healers' fault who decided to not waste their free time on something they don't find fun.

It's SE's duty to look for ways to get some insight on the issue, not our duty to do something we don't enjoy so that they may get the message. We're the customers, not the other way around. And customers have every right to stand up and leave, put their money where their mouth is, if they're unhappy with something.

[Azuri]

It DOES. NOT. EXIST. and we all know it. Meaning it's a 100% pointless canard that distracts from any actual or serious discussion. Arguing against boogiemen only works when at least some version of them actually exists in a realistic sense, and the Cure 1 spamming Sylphie probably doesn't exist past level 30 in low level dungeons (where it legitimately could not matter less), if even that far.

You should try to put challenges that are more entertaining than just going to the last page on fflogs rankings. Here is a beautiful specimen in the wild. They do exist.

And before you come here screaming that "tHeY DoNt jUSt sPaM cuRE I111!!11!!" I have just one thing to say to you. Stop with the strawman hyperbole.

[ForsakenRoe]

that link lmao

Hey, you cant use that example, he's casted a Misery! And he hit the boss with Assize five times! Probably unintentionally, but still!

No, that's you.

damn i got hit by the legendary 'no u' how will i ever recover

all those other words

the attitude of 'you guys dont want to heal, you want to be supports' is, as others have said, mostly wrong. i say mostly because i DO want to heal, but i DO want to support my team, healing is part of that. this game just hasnt been designed for 'healers should heal' mentality, the damage is too infrequent, to easy to deal with, and they cant just 'add more damage' otherwise netflix healers will suddenly have to actually press buttons and it'd be a disaster. i'd love it if more stuff was 'TEA phase 1' amounts of healing but we cant have that and i acknowledge how many people would not be able to keep up with it, that's why my ask for 'make healer more fun' is 'add more complexity to dps rotation'. the good players would have more to do, the less-sweaty players could just do glarespam like we do atm and still contribute like 80% of the damage of the 'actual rotation', and the people who insist they won't do ANY damage as healer now, well they wont notice having 4 buttons in the rotation instead of 1 because they dont press that 1 as it is. everyone wins

if people want to seperate 'support' and 'healer' like this, thats up to them. personally, i started playing healer back in HW when i got into the game, and i enjoyed it a lot due to coming from WOD, where 'healers heal' and i was pressing a lot of healing wave. Coming here though i was able to contribute to the party even when everyone was full health, by throwing out some damage spells, now i see healers not as 'healers' but as what we really are, frontline battle medics. We're not healers like surgeons, who can do 10 hour long operations, we're first responders there to (metaphorically) splint broken bones, suture stab wounds with fishing wire, and occasionally CPR for the DPS who stood in the bad a little bit too long. and the weird thing is, even WOW who is in this anecdote as an example of 'healer should heal', even WOW has now started pushing towards 'healer should contribute damage too' thanks to M+ becoming a thing. in fact, i cant really think of any game anymore where it's 'healer should heal' to the exclusion of every other way of contributing to the party. we should support in whatever way we can, in the same way that tanks can heal themselves (and sometimes the party, thanks Shake it Off trait), DPS can mitigate with feint and addle, etc.

again, the message us fed up 'support mains' as we're apparently being termed now, is not 'we want to do damage!', it's 'hey the game is designed in such a way that a lot of our time is spent doing damage. Adding more incoming pain for us to heal through is cool, but as we get geared, that becomes trivial, and we have over 4 years of raids to prove this. a potential solution is to embrace the fact that we end up at this point of stagnation where we are spending almost 100% of our time doing damage (because the alterative is that we just AFK), and let us have a slightly more interactive rotation for dealing damage with'. trying to muddy the waters with 'admit it, you guys just dont want to heal!' is ridiculous, as evidenced by the fact we're still playing healer (for now). if I didnt want to heal, i could go back to being a tank main like i was in SB for a while. No, i WANT to heal, the game only asks me to heal for the first 3-4 weeks of a tier, then everyone starts getting geared. once people have BIS, i still WANT to heal, but the game no longer REQUIRES me to heal, so i am back to doing damage. and if i'm going to be doing damage (because again, im sure people wouldnt suggest AFKing as a valid alternative), i'd rather appreciate it if doing that damage was a little more engaging.

maybe some healers who love to barse get angry that they're forced to GCD heal, but this game is designed in such a way that GCD healing is the absolute last resort, if there's anything we can use instead we'll use that instead before having to fall back on a medica. in a sense, getting as close to zero damage-losing GCDs is part of the game of playing healer, with reaching zero being the win condition. as such, being required to GCD heal could be perceived by some as 'i am losing'. if i had to create an example to illustrate, the first one my brain comes to for some reason is Mario Kart. Some people just want to win the race, others want to go for the best time. Hitting a banana (using a GCD that loses you damage) is not necessarily going to mean you suddenly dont lose the race (cause you to fail to clear), but it's definitely gonna cost you that 'fastest time' record (epic 100 barse). but that's part of the issue with this whole dilemma, some healers want to heal more, some want more interesting DPS rotations for the downtime we're ALWAYS going to get stuck with, some want to heal LESS cos it's already too stressful, some just queue healer because they want fast queues, and we're all shouting into the conference hall about what each of us wants, pulling in all different directions. I dont envy SE with the job they have of trying to move the role forward. but at the same time, we're customers, and if we dont like what's being served at the restaurant, we're within our rights to complain. no, telling us to eat somewhere else isnt a solution.

here's a thought which occurred to me just now as i type this: what distinguishes a healer as 'in the healing role'? take this thought experiment as an example: overnight, SE has released a patch. Curing Waltz on DNC is now 20y radius like medica2, and has a CD of just 2 seconds. Shield Samba has also been reduced to a 30s cooldown, to match Soil and Kerachole. This would EASILY be enough to complete anything up to extreme trials, and i'd hazard a guess it'd even have been enough to clear P1S and P2S with week 1 gear because they hit like wet noodles. Still, the question is, with those changes in effect, would this recategorise DNC to be a 'healer'? IMO it would not, but it'd have more HPS potential than any of the other healers like this. So, what makes a healer, a 'healer'? how many healing skills vs not-healing skills it has in it's kit? how OFTEN it presses healing vs not-healing skills? some other metric we've yet to see or understand?

[Renathras]

I can see that you like to separate the concept of what a support is and what a healer is, but the game design industry as a whole sees support and healer as synonymous and regularly interchanges the role.

It OFTEN does, but not ALWAYS does.

Examples off the top of my head would include EVE Online, where there is an EXTENSIVE range of Support as a separate role (EWAR, Counter-EWAR, Target Painting, etc etc) from Healing (Logistics/Logi ships/pilots which specialize in armor, shield, and hull repair, respectively). You can argue Eve is a different type of game...

...so then I'd point to Ashes of Creation and Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, both modern MMOs that make this distinction as well.

You pointed to Xenoblade 3 before. Remember when I pointed you to...Final Fantasy games? You know, the series FFXIV is a part of? Where the most recent game just before FFXIV, FFXIII, had a clear distinction between Healing (Medic) and Support (Synergist, also Saboteur) Jobs? And where I pointed out the other FF MMO had a far more complex system that also included Support geared Jobs? Or that the foundation of the MMO genre also included Support as a separate role even as far back as Everquest and Guild Wars 1?

I haven't seen, but did you ever reply pointing out why you need to go outside of the Final Fantasy series to make your argument and what counter you have against using the Final Fantasy series as our basis instead?

This was what the developers of Xenoblade 3 deemed

And what we have in FFXIV is what the developers of Final Fantasy XIV have deemed is theirs. Why appeal to Xenoblade, which is a completely different kind of game, when we have plenty of games that break with your pattern and mentality?

As I said there, many games shoehorn Support into the Healer and sometimes DPS roles (BRD, DNC, RDM, and PLD are all Support as well, particularly BRD and DNC)

A lot of the "collect a hero" phone games also have four roles, such as Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes having Tank, Healer, Support, and Damage Dealer. Most of the games of that type (like the Marvel Heroes one and so on) all have the four role paradigm. So clearly "modern gaming" does not view Support and Healer as synonymous with the ubiquity that you claim.

I could go on, but we've already had this exact conversation...

And I'll say it again:

Saying you like Supports is not an insult. D&D Bards are often designed (depending on the source material), built and played as Supports, and it's fun and useful to the party. FFXIV has this very conversation where we find DNC and BRD are pretty consistently meta because of their Support capability. As are AST and (because Chain is Chain) SCH.

As I said, if someone says "You like having the boss's attention, taking the hits, etc, you seem like you'd like to play a Tank..." no one goes "OMG! That person just accused that dude who likes getting agro and taking the boss's hits of not being a 'real DPSer'!!!" or some such. As Tank is an officially supported and viable role in FFXIV, no one would even think that it's an insult to point out someone wanting to play one wants to play one.

Not to mention, if I recall correctly from that post, some of the things you outlined that you love to do...are Support type actions in a party.

And, again, that wasn't an insult either. As I noted, it's a problem because it means you have Healer minded people and Support minded people fighting because they're both crammed uncomfortably into the same role together. As you might recall, I said it would be nice if SE would just fully embrace Support as its own role and flesh it out for 8/24 man content (and just have it slot in as a DPSer in 4 man ques) and fix the issue that way. I've also suggested in the past that we could also break healing into two groups that were, instead of the "Pure" vs "Barrier" that has largely been a complete failure, into a Heal and Support setup.

...which FFXIV did do in ARR, and it seems people enjoyed that.

As to "decid(ing) whether or not others want to heal", this goes both ways. When telling people who DO want to heal they aren't welcome in FFXIV on healers - something you've seen with your own eyes in this very forum - it engenders responses like mine. The difference is, mine actually is a fair overall position that ISN'T critical or insulting. Don't tell me for a minute you don't think people badmouthing Sylphies aren't being insulting to them, or people saying that folks who don't like to DPS should just quit FFXIV or are bad healers or the like. And I find it a bit odd you chide me for saying people want to be a "green DPS" when that's literally what folks on your side of this discussion have insisted all FFXIV healers should and must be, and that any of us who don't like it are bads. Have you genuinely closed your eyes to seeing that all over the place here and in both FFXIV and FFXIV-Discussion Reddits? Because it happens all the time. How is it rude for me to use the exact same term used by these people to self-describe and used by them to attack people like me?

Tell me, which of those two is more insulting? Which more meanspirited? Which more rude?

Someone saying "You seem to enjoy this type of class in games, which would be a Support minded class; wouldn't it be cool if SE fully fleshed one out in this game?" OR "Stupid cure-spamming Sylphies causing wipes and braindead baby rattle ruining our game and if they can't handle something a step above a braindead rotation, they need to quit FFXIV because this isn't the game for them and they're just lazy bads that want free carries to victories they didn't earn"?

Which of those is more rude? And you know the latter isn't hyperbole because it's happened in these very discussions you and I have both been in together. Yet you oddly never feel compelled to chide them for their rudeness, other than that one post where you showed me some Humanity and noted the unfairness of the forum's continued dogpile on me. And the irony is: I'm not even a Sylphie.

.

As I've noted, you seem to be one of the more rational people here. You can't be blind to this.

Only a few days ago, I said to a friend that I'm pretty sure if someone said "I quit PF healing" they reaction from Ren would be "Then the consequences next tier are on YOU!".
My crystal ball works flawlessly. I'm officially a seer.

I'll take "Things that never happened" for $500, Alex.

If you spent as much time making rational arguments as you spend making up things that have never happened, we might actually be able to have a discussion.

You should try to put challenges that are more entertaining than just going to the last page on fflogs rankings. Here is a beautiful specimen in the wild. They do exist.

Oh my, you seem to found a single example...

...of someone who appears to be a SMN "main" (and I use the term "main" VERY loosely here...) who also highlights as a RPR in Aglaia, and seems to have no records from ShB, meaning it's probably a relatively new player to EW. Not ONLY that, but you can even find in a dungeon run that this individual uses ample damage spells, which you can see from their recorded Fell Court of Troia run.

We have no way of knowing if she was running with a group of friends or in PF, either, so no, that doesn't prove your point of a "specimen in the wild", and even your specimen doesn't prove your point and seems to be a DPS main. She has more clears as a damage dealer - that role you praise so highly - than as a healer. Specifically, she had 4 more clears as a DPSer than a healer. Clearly not quite the Sylphie you want to paint her as.

And before you come here screaming that "tHeY DoNt jUSt sPaM cuRE I111!!11!!" I have just one thing to say to you. Stop with the strawman hyperbole.

If you'd stop making stupid and hyperbolic strawmen arguments, I'd be able to stop calling you out on your hyperbolic strawmen.

[Renathras]

Genuine question to you guys. Be as honest as you can:

If Support WAS ACTUALLY made into a full fledged role in this game, would you play it? If, say, DNC, BRD, RDM, and AST were made into a role that actually focuses on Support with more incidental, but controlled, healing (so not SMN's Firebird party heal which cannot be controlled at will), would you enjoy such a role existing and playing as it? A role focused more on supporting the party with buffs and mitigation, incidental healing, and more of a DPS posture?

FFXIV did this in ARR and that's largely how SCH's were played, just it wasn't officially recognized as distinct. But suppose there was some magical way to convince Yoshi P to do so. Would you find such a role appealing to you at all?

Not gonna lie, I enjoy Support gameplay from time to time and would love it personally, though it would always be an alt thing for me since my base love is healing. But would you not find it enjoyable?

EDIT:

here's a thought which occurred to me just now as i type this: what distinguishes a healer as 'in the healing role'? take this thought experiment as an example: overnight, SE has released a patch. Curing Waltz on DNC is now 20y radius like medica2, and has a CD of just 2 seconds. Shield Samba has also been reduced to a 30s cooldown, to match Soil and Kerachole. This would EASILY be enough to complete anything up to extreme trials, and i'd hazard a guess it'd even have been enough to clear P1S and P2S with week 1 gear because they hit like wet noodles. Still, the question is, with those changes in effect, would this recategorise DNC to be a 'healer'? IMO it would not, but it'd have more HPS potential than any of the other healers like this. So, what makes a healer, a 'healer'? how many healing skills vs not-healing skills it has in it's kit? how OFTEN it presses healing vs not-healing skills? some other metric we've yet to see or understand?

This, though, is actually a good question. I like this.

Do this more, I think this would be a good point for a discussion. Might start a thread on it, actually...