Proposal the embrace the green skin.

[ty_taurus]

I did say to return complexity to the damage kit in addition to cleric stance, if dps isn't necessary to beat fights, it's not really gatekeeping, it's skill expression for the veterans. Cutting the total output is so that damage from the healer is less relevant and they won't be blamed for wiping to enrage, this makes healing more accessible at the low end. As for damage being important, of course it is, but these changes would make it less likely that a healer would be harassed for not doing any damage.

With the current design, healer dps is just 2 buttons, you have to press them if you want to be any good at healers, but if they gate it behind cleric stance and vastly cut the output, it wouldn't be as punishing to the rest of the party if a healer is just starting out and decides not to press their damage buttons.

Except you would still have the ability to do it and thus it would still be an expectation of you. Even if it isn't necessary to clear content, who do you think a party would want to have in their ranks? The healer that just keeps the party alive and contributes nothing else, or the healer that does that and allows them to skip mechanics at the end of a fight, ultimately ending the fight a minute sooner and potentially preventing any critical mistakes that could occur in that final minute? Whether or not fight design demands healer DPS, so long as it is something healers can do, it will be expected of them. Healers who refuse to engage will still be seen as griefing.

[Aravell]

If that's the prevailing opinion, then it seems that both sides will continue not acknowledging each other and there will be no compromise, meaning nothing will ever change with the 2 button spam as there is no consensus.

If you ask for more dps complexity, there will be pushback from the side that wants to heal.
If you ask for constant healing in fights, you get pushback from the side that prefers to dps.

The only solution is to reduce the skill floor to the bare minimum of simple healing and raise the skill ceiling to appease both sides, then maybe the dev team will actually listen to our complaints for once as we have an agreement between both sides.

[ty_taurus]

If that's the prevailing opinion, then it seems that both sides will continue not acknowledging each other and there will be no compromise, meaning nothing will ever change with the 2 button spam as there is no consensus.

If you ask for more dps complexity, there will be pushback from the side that wants to heal.
If you ask for constant healing in fights, you get pushback from the side that prefers to dps.

The only solution is to reduce the skill floor to the bare minimum of simple healing and raise the skill ceiling to appease both sides, then maybe the dev team will actually listen to our complaints for once as we have an agreement between both sides.

At the end of the day, the game is designed in a specific way. It is designed giving healers ample time to contribute DPS, therefore that becomes the expectation. That is how the game is. You cannot change that without redesigning every fight in the game to not allow for DPS opportunity. If someone is on the side of not wanting to be a DPS healer, they are playing the wrong game. It angers me how entitled some players are in believing it's their right to demand healing not work that way, and it angers me further how the developers have left healers in a shoddy state for the sake of trying to not distress that community of players. It is no different than playing Tekken and saying, why can't this be like Smash? If you want to play Smash, play Smash. If you want to play Everquest healers, then go play Everquest. Saying that healers shouldn't DPS in FFXIV is the same as walking into a Wendy's and saying "Yeah, can I get a 16" red sauce pizza with tomato and basil?"

I say this not to attack you, but to try and communicate how problematic it is to try and please everyone by directly contradicting how your game functions on a foundational level, and why they need to wake up and accept that this is the game they created, and healers will never grow until we accept this. Perhaps that means it truly never will grow as you said, which would be a shame, but that is the answer.

Having said that, it doesn't mean we can't have a healer who's playstyle redirects its DPS output into indirect methods as I mentioned before to create something that respects how this game is designed while offering a playstyle that may be more palatable to players who don't like the DPS aspect of healers, but that playstyle does still need to be built around DPS contributions, and it ultimately will still need to attack directly to some degree. I've done lots of for fun build designing within FFXIV's systems and have found my own ways to accomplish something that would work within the confines of this game. There are many ways we could create a healer that uses similar logic to create that type of healer. I think it's fine to create more unique healer playstyles that can appeal to different types of healer players so long as they continue to respect the game's fundamental design, but that's the line that should not be crossed.

[Liam_Harper]

Something that I can't stress enough is that embracing healer dps does not mean less healing. We could still have lots of heals and high damage. Spamming the same aoe GCD heal over and over is not heal focused anyway.

It would mean high uptime gameplay that consists of weaving a wide toolkit of heals with an engaging, varied but not overly complex dps toolkit. Being more oGCD focused would mean resource management is more important or you'd run out of cooldowns on big mechanics. Similar level of effort to a dps. To me that would be amazing.

I imagine many healers shrink from this because it's nowhere near as comfortable as spamming Medica II and Glare and being praised for it because no one died. Not because they actually want heavy healing. They'd likely collapse if healing was a high apm complex experience where you needed to constantly be managing 2-3 hotbars full of heals for an entire fight with 100% uptime. What they really want is 60% uptime and a handful of heals to be the "right" way to play.

Either way ff14 would never be able to support such gameplay due to how gear and mitigation works and a rigid 2 healer comp system. But ff14 would be able to support an engaging green dps.

[Aravell]

I say this not to attack you, but to try and communicate how problematic it is to try and please everyone by directly contradicting how your game functions on a foundational level, and why they need to wake up and accept that this is the game they created, and healers will never grow until we accept this. Perhaps that means it truly never will grow as you said, which would be a shame, but that is the answer.

I don't feel attacked at all, don't worry, I've been healing in this game since ARR, I know the score, I just want to see a compromise between both parties that makes us both happy, a solution that doesn't merely amount to "Throw WHM under the bus, they can be the baby healer".

[ty_taurus]

Something that I can't stress enough is that embracing healer dps does not mean less healing. We could still have lots of heals and high damage. Spamming the same aoe GCD heal over and over is not heal focused anyway.

It would mean high uptime gameplay that consists of weaving a wide toolkit of heals with an engaging, varied but not overly complex dps toolkit. Being more oGCD focused would mean resource management is more important or you'd run out of cooldowns on big mechanics. Similar level of effort to a dps. To me that would be amazing.

I imagine many healers shrink from this because it's nowhere near as comfortable as spamming Medica II and Glare and being praised for it because no one died. Not because they actually want heavy healing. They'd likely collapse if healing was a high apm complex experience where you needed to constantly be managing 2-3 hotbars full of heals for an entire fight with 100% uptime. What they really want is 60% uptime and a handful of heals to be the "right" way to play.

Either way ff14 would never be able to support such gameplay due to how gear and mitigation works and a rigid 2 healer comp system. But ff14 would be able to support an engaging green dps.

Exactly. We're in this very bizarre state where the development team is taking a stance of "if we don't talk about it, it's not there." Which is the cause of these issues. We can acknowledge that this game is build with the intent of healer DPS contributions, and if we accept that, we can design healers around that logic to create something that's different and unique--not just offensive DPS healers, but also healers that can contribute indirectly to more aptly provide focus on healing or support.

[Alpheus]

Yea I think taking healers in a support direction is what's needed, even just small things like giving WHM and SGE party offensive buffs, like adding a Hastega effect for the party whenever you pop Presence of Mind and giving SGE a DH version of Chain Stratagem (or any kind of analogue to Chain Stratagem) since they seem set on maintaining this 2min Buff window. That and maybe 1 or 2 DPS buttons and more interactivity with their kits and their Job Gauges* and that honestly fixes most of the issue of healer downtime without necessitating a change in battle design.

*For WHM and SCH especially. Sidebar: Like why doesn't the lily gauge give the WHM passive benefits for having one or two lilies in the bank (one or two to promote the player to find ways to use the lilies so as not to overcap it and not just letting the lilies sit there while still building up to a blood lily by using them as it is now). And something equally engaging for SCH (and can we please rename Aetherflow to Stratagems or something so we can inject some scholarly vibes back into it [would just need to change the animation to something bookworm-y] Because Aetherflow and its animation always had more SMN vibes tbh)

[Sebazy]

So what happens when we take advantage of this logic and allow other types of tools to generate DPS in some fashion equal to or greater than your Glare or Glare equivalent? What that tool is matters a lot, because healing, for example, is still only needed in rare occurrences. If you attach it to buffs, you could end up with a much stronger healer who not only DPSes, but also is keeping an attack buff on the party, or even a defensive buff, and will that make the healer fun to play if you're just spamming 1 buff on the target?

Going down the route of giving us more of a focus on buffing vs self DPS is something I've wished SE would trial with one of the healers for years. Even if it's just an experiment that potentially writes one of the healers off for a few years if things don't pan out. At this stage, so be it. Give us the choice and if we don't like it, we've still got 3 other healers to choose from.

It will 100% be a very difficult concept to tune well though and I'm not really sure their internal team is up to it in it's current form. Is this a good time to drop in my suggestion that SE should hire another studio in a consultancy manner again?

I've been lurking and reading the healer discourse for some time now and I'm wondering if this proposal can satisfy both sides:

1) Return cleric stance and complexity to the damage side of the healer kit.
2) Cut the maximum potential healer damage output to half of a tank's.
3) Design fights so that healer damage helps out in a weaker party, but is ultimately irrelevant to beating the enrage.

Personally, I think this would allow for skill expression from the veterans while allowing the healers who dislike doing damage to also not be harassed since doing damage on a healer would then be irrelevant but fun.

Thoughts?

1) As mentioned, returning cleric stance is going to cause far more issues than it'll solve. IMHO It'll please a specific subset of high end healers, an unhealthy portion of which have already quit. On DPS complexity, giving back additional SB era DPS buttons from WHM and SCH would be a decent move though. As much as some people will complain about anything DPS related, I genuinely can't see any issue with WHM getting back Aero 3 and a tweaked Fluid Aura. Personally I'd go a step further with SCH and give them back their HW dots along with a Miasma II style MP/Movement dump. For AST, logs be damned, lets get back 3.2 era cards with a few tweaks to make the fodder more competitive such as switching it for a healthy DH buff.

2) I don't really see how this solves anything unless you really cut down healer's damage to the point where it's flat non existent? Healers are already at ~80% of the output of a tank as things stand. Dropping them to 50% is going to take them to ~3.5k each or 7k combined. That's still a very significant chunk of damage. Not to mention this would also make healers have an even more miserable experience in solo content than they already do. IMHO the only way SE could achieve the goal of preventing healer damage being a crutch is to simply make it so that healers can't afford to sustain their damage whilst also healing. Simply making nukes cost prohibitive isn't really the way to go as again, solo content will be a horrible experience. Rather adding a cost to oGCDs and tweaking the MP economy to match would be required. Would a more passive style of play that force standing around be an improvement? Ehhh I'm not really sure on that one. However......

3) Handily tying in with the previous point... If fights were designed so that they required strict bursts at specific windows but otherwise were generally laxer on the overall enrage timer, that could make the above idea less horrible. Enough to make it a stomachable direction? Still not sure but that's what forums are for

IMHO I think switching to a Savage ethos that focuses more on quick bursts of DPS rather than sustained damage across the entire encounter would be more impactful than hamstringing healers from their DPS kits in general though.

[fulminating]

Pseudo-cleric stances for scholar and ast (faeries and sects respectively) could be an interesting way to make them feel more engaging, as long as they were balanced to be more for optimisation than basic competency.

I'd also like to see heavensward bane and at least miasma if not bio making a return to scholar to make gcd healing less punishing. For ast it might work if there was some kind of mark on the boss that will detonate when you cast a gcd heal as a partial refund on the malefic you didn't cast, scaled so you will want to have 100% uptime on it, rather than casting it before you know you're going to need a heal. White mage needs rebuilt from the ground up because GCD healer is the stupidest concept imaginable in this game and sage needs to be deleted until someone thinks of an identity for it that isn't "discount scholar", maybe leaning in the ff sage direction as a more healing focused red mage?

[Aravell]

1) As mentioned, returning cleric stance is going to cause far more issues than it'll solve. IMHO It'll please a specific subset of high end healers, an unhealthy portion of which have already quit. On DPS complexity, giving back additional SB era DPS buttons from WHM and SCH would be a decent move though. As much as some people will complain about anything DPS related, I genuinely can't see any issue with WHM getting back Aero 3 and a tweaked Fluid Aura. Personally I'd go a step further with SCH and give them back their HW dots along with a Miasma II style MP/Movement dump. For AST, logs be damned, lets get back 3.2 era cards with a few tweaks to make the fodder more competitive such as switching it for a healthy DH buff.

2) I don't really see how this solves anything unless you really cut down healer's damage to the point where it's flat non existent? Healers are already at ~80% of the output of a tank as things stand. Dropping them to 50% is going to take them to ~3.5k each or 7k combined. That's still a very significant chunk of damage. Not to mention this would also make healers have an even more miserable experience in solo content than they already do. IMHO the only way SE could achieve the goal of preventing healer damage being a crutch is to simply make it so that healers can't afford to sustain their damage whilst also healing. Simply making nukes cost prohibitive isn't really the way to go as again, solo content will be a horrible experience. Rather adding a cost to oGCDs and tweaking the MP economy to match would be required. Would a more passive style of play that force standing around be an improvement? Ehhh I'm not really sure on that one. However......

3) Handily tying in with the previous point... If fights were designed so that they required strict bursts at specific windows but otherwise were generally laxer on the overall enrage timer, that could make the above idea less horrible. Enough to make it a stomachable direction? Still not sure but that's what forums are for

IMHO I think switching to a Savage ethos that focuses more on quick bursts of DPS rather than sustained damage across the entire encounter would be more impactful than hamstringing healers from their DPS kits in general though.

You raised some good points.

1) I would actually love the return of all the old playstyles, with or without cleric stance, perhaps they can remove some of the clunk if they do bring it back?

2) I definitely did not take solo content into account when I made this suggestion. But I do love your suggestion of making doing dps on healer a balancing act of resources once again. Maybe make ogcd heals more limited, make dps spells more expensive and make gcd heals return resources? Just a small thought.

3) That kind of design worked back in HW era because their fights have phase pushes, I don't believe it would work with current fight design because it would cause a lot of the fight to get skipped because of the backloaded nature, it would be difficult to allow that flexibility again, that's for sure.

Overall, I wouldn't mind the current design if they brought back more, shall we say, activeness(?) in healing. Such as crit autos, crit mini tankbuster cleaves, environmental chip damage, random targetted bleeds/high damage, or maybe even something crazy like a boss that autoattacks 1st, 2nd and 3rd aggro, so you have to also constantly keep a dps alive. There's so much they could do, it's just frustrating that they don't.