Has anyone quit healing?

[ty_taurus]

Oh my god, you're...frustrating. >_<

Dude, just no.

You CANNOT use one questline to insist it was some message to the playerbase but ignore one that completely negates that argument. You said one healer questline tells you, in effect, that Raising people is bad and damage is more important than Raising - as that would be the message from "don't use Raise without using Stone, Aero, and Fluid Aura first" - which is you completely misunderstanding it wasn't even Raise, it was Transfusion. You can't appeal to that then turn around and ignore contradictory evidence because it suits you.

You're taking it too literally. The way games set up storytelling and lore is naturally meant to guide the player. The Conjurer questline is not saying "If you combo Raise out of Stone, it won't reduce your HP to 1." It's saying "stop trying to run before you can walk" and trying to deliver the point that you can't just ignore your DPS spells. If you were to play a game where your character enters a cave, and your companion character spots bandits, or soldiers, or something, and says "Oh-no, if we get caught here, we're screwed. We have to get passed them without them noticing." What does that imply about the gameplay you're going to encounter? Conjurer is the beginning of the White Mage. The questline is teaching you the basics of your jobs future gameplay: learn to balancing healing with your attacks and protection abilities (White Mage had Protect and Stoneskin back then of course). Inversely, Arcanist taught the Scholar to use their different pets (Never did NG+ for those so I have no idea what they tell you now), and taught you how to use your offensive tools already. Scholar gained all of their healing late and taught you how to use your newfound healing abilities that you haven't had the chance to practice yet.

The videos were to show you how people played at the time, which disagrees with how you are saying Healers were played at the time. It disproves your position that Healers have always been played as Green DPS. And note that those encounters, on release, were very difficult with high damage output. That's probably why they brought three healers to a Titan fight. And as I've said, there are plenty more. How many do I have to link before you admit that?

What does that have to do with developer intent? Your argument is that how some players played is indicative of what the designers wanted from the playerbase, or what the combat encounters would allow you to do, but that doesn't make sense. My original post was about what the game was built for and what the design team tried to create when designing fights. There were Black Mage players back then that just used their blizzard spells because they wanted to be ice mages like in WoW. Does that immediately mean this was the intended way to play Black Mage just because some players did this?

Except it doesn't:

- No tight enrage timers.

- No slate of oGCD heals for Healers to use to weave in between damage abilities.

- Few DPS spells for Healers compared to damage dealers of the era.

Note I said "The combat didn't say it". Past tense, not present tense. You're using present tense to argue that ARR fight design did a thing that ARR fight design didn't do. P8S was not in ARR. Ex4 was not in ARR. Healers that have more oGCDs than GCDs were not in ARR

What part of those examples prevents you from DPSing? Are you telling me if something isn't absolutely required in order to complete an objective in a game, that that can only mean it was not intended for the player to use? If that's true than I'd like to redirect some interesting examples to you...

The Legend of Zelda BoTW completed without climbing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6ub-Z7snI
Pokemon Crystal defeated using only a Sunkern (Including the battle with Red at the end): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TQXBvsgQnU
Final Fantasy X Final Boss (the last one you can game over with) beaten on a no sphere grid run [spoilers]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvHHdgy4Hxs
Cyperpunk beaten without killing any enemies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZqvZVHT3Ts

If it was true that the intent of game design is defined by the barest of minimums necessary to complete that content, then sure, your argument holds water. But that also means that from the above examples, BoTW is intended for you to never use climbing, Pokemon is an RPG intended to be defeated with just a Sunkern, the sphere grid is not intended to be used in FFX, and Cyberpunk is intended for you to let AI companions defeat enemies for you.

My point is, sure, DPSing as a healer was slower and more methodical back during ARR. And I would actually love to get back to that. I want healing to be about making choices between offense and healing rather than just use offense and weave healing as needed most of the time. It was more fun having to decide when it was okay to attack and when I'd need to cast Adloquium. Imagine casting Adloquium or Succor outside of savage. What a novel concept. But that is not the omission of the player's ability to DPS, pointed out by your video examples where the WHM players literally stand still more than they even heal, or just cast Cure on tank with full HP or near-full HP.

No, I don't think the designers were intending that you'd have maximum DPS uptime, but the structure of fight design in FFXIV very clearly establishes that Healers are meant to contribute when they can, I think there was just a much greater emphasis on the "when they can" part.

And secondary question:

Why is it so important to you that you're right about this thing you're wrong about?

Couldn't I say the same to you? What's stopping you from moving on? I'm trying to explain that you're misunderstanding what my point was. If the game design didn't want you to DPS, you wouldn't be able to. Instead, you had a selection of offensive tools and time to use them. Whether or not the player was willing to take advantage of that doesn't matter because that couldn't possibly have influenced how the game was created, especially since there were no healers playing that way back when ARR was in development, unless someone at SE can see into the future.