Has anyone quit healing?

[Renathras]

...

BEFORE READING THE HIDDEN BLOCK BELOW:

Note that if you had just said "OHHHH, I see. You aren't saying what I thought you were. You're saying what I believe is true as well. Cool, we're on the same page. Now we can move the discussion forward because we're in agreement - ARR was designed for Healers to be Healers, but with an option/freedom to DPS if the situation allows for it, but not a requirement to do so.", my reaction would be entirely conciliatory. If you went on to say, "While the game has changed, I understand some players from that era understandably feel 'grandfathered in' to the game they signed on to play back then, and it does make sense to, in at least some ways, ensure that the game allows for them in some way.", I'd be (figuratively) kissing you.

Instead, you chose to go the route of "You're wrong, you need to admit and accept you're wrong, and what you're wrong about, is that everything you said...<mumbles>isactuallytrueandIagreewithitbutI'mgoingtosayyou'rewronganywayandclaimyourpointwasmypointtheentiretime</mumbles>"

Maybe you don't feel that's what you did...but that's what you did. You hopped into a conversation in progress, brought up the CNJ questline, expected everyone to shift to talking about the topic in your terms, didn't realize you misunderstood them, and then insisted they were wrong while saying (as if it was your argument the entire time) the same thing they'd been saying the entire time.

And yes, you misunderstood me when you entered into the conversation - and still do:

Why do you think I asked you to tell me what you think I'm arguing/saying? Because it was clear to me that you didn't get what I was saying - and by this post above, you still don't. If you did, you wouldn't have restated my own premise while saying I'm wrong. You clearly don't think I hold the same premise despite me having said so, even as a bullet point, pages ago.

Oh, that explains why you're so wrong.

Translation: "Oh, I see, Ren. You're talking about something different and I misunderstood you. You're actually right about what you're saying. But I don't want to admit it, so I'm going to say you misunderstood me, even though you pointed out several times that I was talking about a different thing than you, even though you asked me to tell you what I (Ty) thought you (Ren) were saying since it seemed clear to you I was misunderstanding you, and even though you were right about what you said - I'm going to say you're wrong anyway. Not just 'wrong', but 'so wrong', to save face and try to make you look weaker/bad so you'll cow down deflated."

And you wonder why I get frustrated with you.

You completely misinterpreted what I was saying since the beginning. I never said the design team balanced content around healer DPS. ARR didn't have modern enrages, and while it did feature some DPS checks, it was certainly balanced without healer DPS initially.

This is literally what I've been saying for the last three pages. Welcome to the discussion. You can't say I'm wrong when I've been saying literally this same thing you realize is true. The issue here is you were misunderstanding me this whole time. Remember: This discussion branch started with me saying I'd play Healer as long as they weren't made into mere DPSers, someone asking me if they weren't that already, and someone saying they always had been that way. I was contesting that, using the above as my logic for why it was not always that way.

The discussion wasn't just you stating a position (you weren't even the one who initially said it that I was contesting! I was arguing with someone else and you jumped into our ongoing conversation) or people misunderstanding you or not. In effect, you jumped into our existing conversation and misunderstood me. The onus was on you, as the newcomer, to understand the conversation ongoing, not for everyone else to stop the conversation they were having and engage in the one you wanted. While you can contribute to steering an active conversation, you cannot claim ownership of it nor that people not talking about specifically what you were thinking (but obviously not stating clearly) makes them wrong (when they were right on the facts of their argument) because you wanted to talk about something different...

I was talking about the general gameplay loop the design team was crafting--something where healers had the freedom to attack, and would do so at times, and this extra damage would be a bonus, not the standard. That was definitely a part of ARR design.

No, we were talking about the Devs' design intention in ARR and whether they were designing Healers to be "Green DPS" (a term meaning "expected to attack" not "freedom to attack if they want") as part of the encounter design. You're now implicitly saying my position here was correct ("freedom to attack" is not "requirement/expectation/or onus to attack"), so while saying I'm wrong, your on statement is saying I was not.

It's okay though, now that you know why you're wrong

...while you keep saying I'm wrong - almost like you can't admit defeat or let it go - your own statements are literally what I've been saying all this time. Meaning I'm right. You can't reword what I've been saying this whole time and say that makes me wrong. You're literally making the argument I've made this entire time:

1) For that era, Healers were given a handful of damage spells for soloing content but weren't expected to use them in Raids (this was also largely true of most Healers in WoW during that same timeframe, which was Wrath of the Lich King, I believe, where WoW Healers had likewise very skimpy damage rotations; Paladin famously only had 2 DPS buttons, Judgement and Holy Shock, 3 against Undead since you could add Exorcism once every 30 seconds or so)

2) WHM was never designed to play as a DPS Job. We even saw this as late as SB, and really even as far as 6.0 (Lilies not being DPS neutral because the Devs felt that DPS shouldn't be the focus of the Job). In ARR, the only WHM oGCD heal was Benediction once every 6 minutes or so. There was no way you were healing a raid with one cure every 6 minutes. WHM was very much designed from the ground up for GCD healing. Even moreso if you look at 1.0 as its proto-type. 1.0 WHM was...well, I'll let this video speak for itself:

Note that no where in this premise did I say "healers were designed where they had no freedom to DPS if they wanted to.

Note the first phrase I bolded, specifically two words: "expected to".

I didn't say they weren't allowed to.

I didn't say they were only allowed to heal and nothing else.

I didn't say no one very casted any damage spells (and said the opposite on a number of occasions).

My contention has always been they had the freedom to - a freedom which was chiefly used by SCHs from very early on - but not the requirement to.

A position you now are stating while insisting I'm wrong, even though you're saying my argument!

My contention has only ever been the encounters were not designed to require them to.

...which is literally what you're saying now:

ARR didn't have modern enrages, and while it did feature some DPS checks, it was certainly balanced without healer DPS initially. I was talking about the general gameplay loop the design team was crafting--something where healers had the freedom to attack, and would do so at times, and this extra damage would be a bonus, not the standard.

THIS IS LITERALLY MY ARGUMENT AND HAS BEEN THIS ENTIRE TIME.

You cannot present my argument in different words and then say I'm wrong when you're saying the exact same thing now that IS what I've been saying this ENTIRE TIME.

and you can accept that, I think we could move on to a more fair discussion, yeah?

You need to apologize now before we can "move on to a more fair discussion". Because not only have you lied (as I said previously), now you're lying more, and you're saying I'm wrong while simultaneously (now) making the very argument I've made this entire time and acting like that makes you right and me wrong. Incorrigible...

THAT.
SAID:

I also think AST is the right healer to move forward with a healer who disguises their DPS contributions as healing. I've done no shortage of pondering over how exactly to get it just right. I think I have a good core concept, but the details are always finnicky. It's a tough concept to work out on paper without having access to a build to test any ideas in.

This I agree with. I think the trick is removing the RNG, or at least reducing it. Bole and Ewer (SB) could be good cards...but only if they came up when you needed them. If a Tankbuster was coming up and you got Bole, it was useful. But if you got it when no Tankbuster as coming up, you'd generally rather have Balance. I'm not sure how to do this without exploding their hotbar, but imagine an AST with the SB buffs, but they were on a shared CD and you could choose to use any one of them every 20 seconds. This way, AST could be an actual buffer, as it could use buffs based on the situation instead of 4-5 times out of 6 drawing a buff that doesn't fit or isn't needed in the situation. And just like I think HoTs with interesting interactions are good, I think buffs with interesting interactions are good. SB AST's ability to modify buffs on a CD to do things like make them AOE or extend their durations are all really cool ideas that would be nice to see come back as an integral part of their gameplay.

Buffs by their nature need some level of certainty. As much as RNG is AST's aesthetic, RNG is why their buffing game didn't work as much as anything else.

Also, I wasn't trying to lie. I hadn't seen your suggestion of that previously.

I don't know that you were, and I live by several paradigms, one of which is a quote (probably wrongly) attributed to Gandhi:

"Do not assume malice when ignorance is a possible explanation; Humans are far more often stupid than they are evil."

Which...is less contingent on the "stupid" part (personally, I'd prefer being stupid to being evil), but the point of "People often don't intend to do bad things, so don't assume they are". I'm willing to let it go if you'll...just stop doing it.

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But it's frustrating when you're so desperate to save face you can't just say "OHHH, I see. Yeah, you're right. We agree on that."

We'd be having a far healthier conversation if you could just say that. It doesn't even require you to admit fault! All it requires is for you to not attack me.

[ty_taurus]

Note that if you had just said "OHHHH, I see. You aren't saying what I thought you were.

Strange. All I did was respond to you the way you normally respond to me. I thought for sure that if I tried responding more like you do, that we'd have an easier time communicating, but it seems I was wrong.

People constantly get this wrong, to the point it's shocking to me people get this as wrong as they do.

That sounds kinda like you're telling someone that they're interpreting art wrong. "No, that's clearly not what the artist was trying to convey with this painting. So many people get this wrong."

[Renathras]

Strange. All I did was respond to you the way you normally respond to me.

No, you didn't.

When I respond to you, I take your arguments and I present a case against them, if I have one.

I don't say you're wrong while restating your prior clearly stated position. In this way, if I'm getting it wrong, you can just say "Oh, wait, X isn't my argument. I'm arguing Y." and clearly state that, so I can say "Oh, okay, so let's talk about Y then". I don't say, after you've spent pages saying Y "Look, you're wrong about X, I'm right about Y, so you need to admit you're wrong". If you clearly state your position, I don't insist you're saying something you aren't. And if I've misunderstood your position, and you say outright "Oh, I don't mean that, I mean..." and clearly state what you mean instead, I won't keep insisting you're arguing the former. And if you clearly state your position, I don't read it, read you saying that you think I'm not understanding it, and then finally insist you're wrong in some failed quest for internet points as I state your clearly stated position as my own and insist that I'm right about it and you're wrong about the very thing you've been saying the entire time. Again, in addition to outright saying this several times, it was included in my bullet point list. It wasn't something that required reading between the lines or you to know my mind to be sure of, or even you to have read through paragraphs of text. Just skimming my posts would have made it stand out, and my other posts reinforce them such that if you'd been reading my posts before replying to them, you should have seen it...unless you only read enough to pull out some little thing to argue against and ignore the whole?

If you have been arguing this the entire time, we need to work on your communication skills and reading skills so that you could have said a simple "Oh, I think you misunderstand me, here's my position, and from reading your posts, it's identical to yours. We're both right, just using different words." Or even what I did, a simple "What do you think I'm saying/arguing here? Because I don't think you're seeing what I'm actually arguing."

And I made it unambiguous several times, including at the end of that HB last page where you'd see it right above the summary to draw the eye:

What, exactly, do you even think my argument here is?

I said the game was not designed around an intent on the Dev's part that Healers would be DPSing (or DPSing meaningfully) during at the time high-end encounters. No where did I say their intent was that Healers never be allowed to hit a single DPS button in their entire gameplay at any point. What is it you think I'm arguing, because you've made this strawman several times.

Surely you didn't miss all the times I said this?

THAT is how I post to you, and had you merely done that "What do you think my argument is here? Because you're talking like you think it's X but no where did I say X/I said Y."

That's how I respond to you, and had you responded to me like that...I wouldn't even be typing out this reply.

.

When you said the CNJ questline was to teach players that as Healers they were supposed to deal damage. So I don't misrepresent you, your exact words were:

If they really didn't want healers doing damage, why design fights to give you an exorbitant amount of time where no one needs healing? Why include a tool like Cleric Stance? Why make the moral of the entire Conjurer class questline, the first and only questline available for the healer role at level 1 that introduces fresh players to FFXIV's world and its gameplay state, that healing is not about only healing--but about balancing healing with defense and destruction?

...

"Learn to embrace your elemental spells and master the balance of destruction and salvation...

I can see you saying "if they didn't want healers to do damage" you might have meant "if they didn't want healers to be allowed - but not required - to do damage", but given your past statements, it was reasonable to infer you wouldn't have meant that. BUT, it's hard to get that message from "Why make the moral of the entire Conjurer class questline ... that healing is not about only healing--but about balancing healing with defense and destruction?", which implies the intention "that playing a healer in FFXIV requires dealing damage to clear encounters", and likewise, " "Learn to embrace your elemental spells and master the balance of destruction and salvation..."

Given your past statements have been that ARR and HW required Healers to deal damage and was designed with the intent that Healers do damage, if you've evolved on that stance, you should probably have said so instead of assuming I'd realize it without you at any time saying or indicating you'd done so, and with you arguing against me making the same statement.

When someone says something, and you say "No, <offer rebuttal>", it's reasonable for them to assume you don't mean "Yes, I agree, and here's me agreeing with you".

I thought for sure that if I tried responding more like you do, that we'd have an easier time communicating, but it seems I was wrong.

Show me where I've ever taken your clearly stated argument, made it my own, and called you wrong for making it. Again, you can see in my post above where I quoted myself laying it out in bullet point format. You surely saw that, did you not? I also said the same thing several times and you seem to have read and replied to those posts. So there shouldn't have been a misunderstanding on your part as, unlike you, I did not make my position nebulous nor does it conflict my past statements. How many times in all of our discussions have I said Healing in this game allows - and always has - Healers to throw damage spells? Did I not say a few pages ago that I did so myself in ARR and WoW when it was possible to do so without compromising healing needs? Did I not say that's why I thought 0 mana damage spells were such a great idea on WoW's part?

I'm confused about how you're missing basically all of my arguments while arguing against me.

That sounds kinda like you're telling someone that they're interpreting art wrong.

When a story says "The moral of the story is X", it's not a matter of interpretation, unless you're going to argue that the message of the story is not to believe things said to you straightforwardly. You can argue there were additional messages at play, but when a story outright tells you what its message is, to ignore that message entirely isn't an interpretation. It's you insisting you know better than the writer what the writer intended.

If someone made a painting of something straightforward, and with the painting said what the intent was - for example, if someone made a painting of Lady Liberty freeing slaves with a speech bubble of her saying "Slavery is wrong and incompatible with liberty", you can't say "So what this picture is telling us is how important slavery is to ensuring a free people, and liberty requires war and bloodshed, and also slavery - because the picture obviously depicts slaves...that's my interpretation". When your interpretation is at odds with the source material's direct statement, it's likely not an interpretation so much as an error.

.

To be clear:

You COULD argue that the CNJ quest line was trying to tell Healer players to do damage and make a statement that healers should do damage in the game - you'd have to be able to explain why the SCH does not while the WHM one does, but you could at least make that argument. But you can't rationally argue that it was saying Sylphie's issue was refusing to cast Aero when the story outright says her error was that she was trying to consume her own life force to fuel her spells, something that would kill her just as it had killed her mother. You also can't say her turning point was learning to embrace dealing damage when, again, the story says her turning point was learning to trust and channel the Elementals' strength and ambient aether to fuel her spells rather than relying on her own life force.

[Renathras]

...

Anyways, Olive Branch time:

IF your position is that you agree with me that ARR Healers and the game mechanics, encounters, and Dev intent was not for Healers to be required to do damage, but rather they could freely choose to deal damage (or NOT to deal damage) during times that did not require it, nor involve them compromising their healing, which at the time was GCD based, and that this damage was merely a bonus when done, not a requirement and not expected or intended by the Devs (or the wider community at the time)...

...then we can drop this line of tit-for-tat and discuss what that entails, since we will agree on the position I've held this entire time...and clearly stated that was my position multiple times... (and if you've also held it this entire time, we can simply chalk this up to a..."misunderstanding".)

Namely, that people playing the game from before SB (and arguably some from before ShB even including SB) who enjoy that form of gameplay that doesn't require DPS from Healers and which does not view Healers as "Green DPS" (which, so we're clear on the term, means "A paradigm where Healers are expected and required to be focused on and contributing to DPS, and where that DPS contribution is required for clearing content, such that they aren't Healers so much as they are Support DPS that only incidentally manage health bars while focusing on their primary DPS duties of dealing damage and being damage dealers - hence 'Green DPS' instead of 'Green Healers' or 'Healers'.") had a place in this game, and as loyal players, should still have a place in this game. Thus, any solution to the current issue with healers should include them and their way of playing - not modifications to it to make the Green DPS side happy while giving these "grandfathered in" players something they can merely stand/stomach/accept rather than enjoy, or only allow them to continue playing that way at a penalty.

.

But anyway, as regards this discussion and the OP, I'll say it again:

No, I haven't quit healing and have no intentions to do so unless they force the Green DPS paradigm.

[ForsakenRoe]

Namely, that people playing the game from before SB (and arguably some from before ShB even including SB) who enjoy that form of gameplay that doesn't require DPS from Healers and which does not view Healers as "Green DPS" (which, so we're clear on the term, means "A paradigm where Healers are expected and required to be focused on and contributing to DPS, and where that DPS contribution is required for clearing content, such that they aren't Healers so much as they are Support DPS that only incidentally manage health bars while focusing on their primary DPS duties of dealing damage and being damage dealers - hence 'Green DPS' instead of 'Green Healers' or 'Healers'.") had a place in this game, and as loyal players, should still have a place in this game. Thus, any solution to the current issue with healers should include them and their way of playing - not modifications to it to make the Green DPS side happy while giving these "grandfathered in" players something they can merely stand/stomach/accept rather than enjoy, or only allow them to continue playing that way at a penalty.

.

But anyway, as regards this discussion and the OP, I'll say it again:

No, I haven't quit healing and have no intentions to do so unless they force the Green DPS paradigm.

Again for the probably hundredth time at this point, they have indeed forced the 'green DPS paradigm' as you describe it, and have done since partway through HW. Enrages have been factoring in healer damage for going on for 8 years. Stone Sky Sea and it's later variants have DPS measurements for every raid since 3.0, and Healers have a value assigned. And it's a different value for each healer Job, meaning they're expecting slightly different amounts of personal DPS from each (which makes sense, since some don't have raidbuffs and some do), but the fact the values are different means they've tested and balanced the outputs, and come up with an 'expected value'. You're free to disagree ofc, but the fact of the matter is that we're already 'Green DPS' in terms of responsibility, just not so in rotational complexity as much as previous expansions. Here's a spreadsheet of (apparently) the old DPS values required for each fight, from A1 to A8S.

If you were in content that expected damage from the healers, and you didn't provide damage, you were griefing your team (or were overgeared as hell). If you were in content that DIDN'T expect damage from the healers, well, everyone would still think you were griefing but it's just an EX roulette so they just bit their tongue and sucked up the +8min run length cos it's not worth the risk of falling foul of the TOS. This was as true in HW as it is now in EW.

[Renathras]

Again for the probably hundredth time at this point,

Again for probably the hundredth time at this point, no, they have not. Certainly not "since partway through HW", a time where they outright said they were NOT using such a paradigm.

Even as late as 6.0, they weren't balancing that way - if they were, Misery would have been DPS neutral, and they wouldn't have reduced the DPS kits in ShB and outright removed Energy Drain. Only from "community" backlash did they reinstate Energy Drain in ShB (and half the complaints weren't ED being removed, they were that there was nothing to spend AF on if everyone was at full health - if they had given a AF spender shield like Divine Benediction or Celestial Intersection - that would have allayed a good chunk of those complaints), and didn't make Misery DPS neutral until 6.1. They literally are not, as Developers, paying attention to that or focusing on Healer DPS. It's ridiculously clear that they are not at this point.

Most encounters do not actually demand Healer damage for beating enrages. The only case this is true are early ilevel Savage clears and "Go play Ultimate" Ultimates. With a team of 99 DPSers, your Healers could probably only cast heals and your team clear the encounters with a healthy margin to spare. The Devs outright said in HW they did not balance around Healer DPS contribution, which means you can't claim they did so since 3.0 unless you're going to argue they were outright lying.

We aren't Green DPS. But I honestly don't get why you respond to someone saying "I'll quit healer when..." with effectively a "Well, that condition's met, you better quit now, then!"

If you were in content that DIDN'T expect damage from the healers, well, everyone would still think you were griefing

They literally changed and then removed Cleric Stance because of how much of the community was NOT saying this. That damage WASN'T expected from the Healers in most content and it WASN'T seen as griefing by most of the community. So much so, those insisting on it were causing a great deal of friction in the community, to the point the Devs removed the "stance dance" tool to shut them down.

No, we are not "Green DPS" yet. As I said, some people have just convinced themselves of that and want to try convincing everyone else for some ungodly reason.

EDIT: Though as an aside - I find it kind of amusing that link you posted indicates higher Healer DPS than Tank DPS. An interesting inversion on the present...

[ty_taurus]

Ultimately, the whole origin story of the debate was about whether or not it was expected that healers would engage with their DPS actions outside of solo content when the game was in development and during the launch of ARR, which the content of ARR makes clear was expected. "Expected" in this context referring to whether or not the community would engage with it and NOT in the context of whether or not the content demanded it. ARR didn't really have enrages in the same way that we have enrages now, and healer DPS was not required. I believe this indicates healer DPS was perceived by the designers as a reward for good healing. HW was not really a part of that train of thought.

Back during that time, I wasn't really invested in Savage, moreso because I didn't really have a group of people to do it with and I wasn't super invested in trying to find a group, so my knowledge on the finer details of Savage gameplay was more limited. That said, I do know that the combat team royally fudged the testing of savage fights during HW, and it was a big deal that led to an apology and a promise to do better moving forward. I wouldn't put it past them that healer DPS wasn't intended to be required but might have been on week 1 unintentionally, but I can't say from experience. SCH parsed higher than NIN at the time, from posts I've seen in the past, so required or not, I can't imagine healer DPS not being of significant value to raid groups especially since SCH was largely viewed as a required job regardless of whether or not it was required to get clears. Even if the design team attempted to balance fights around healers not contributing damage, I imagine the raiding community would aggressively pressure healers to do so anyway. You no doubt would be skipping mechanics with it anyway, but that of course is the community view and not the design view.

Perhaps that's even why Savage content began expecting healer DPS, because the amount of mechanics that you could skip by having healers attacking was significant enough that the combat design team may as well have been forced into taking it into account, and likely contributed to the decision to axe old Cleric Stance.

They literally changed and then removed Cleric Stance because of how much of the community was NOT saying this. That damage WASN'T expected from the Healers in most content and it WASN'T seen as griefing by most of the community. So much so, those insisting on it were causing a great deal of friction in the community, to the point the Devs removed the "stance dance" tool to shut them down.

I recall forum conversations from HW, and it would very commonly refer to statements that effectively can be summarized as either "As a healer, you should be DPSing. If you aren't DPSing, you're griefing your team." or the other side of the fence that would go "Healers aren't supposed to DPS and I'm not going to." One of the two would go first, followed by the other. Then after both those statements came through, it would be followed up with more genuinely concerned players who'd say things like, "I try to DPS when I can, but sometimes I'm afraid of going into Cleric Stance, or if it's a new fight, I prefer to get comfortable with the mechanics before I try to DPS. It's not griefing." Then you'd have the first camp reassure those players saying "It's okay if you're learning a new fight, or you're trying to get better at healing. What matters is that you're trying your best to help your parties, but it helps to practice getting a few hits in now and then to get comfortable with it." Then the arguments would die down, and then start back up again.

[Renathras]

Ultimately, the whole origin story of the debate was about whether or not it was expected that healers would engage with their DPS actions outside of solo content when the game was in development and during the launch of ARR, which the content of ARR makes clear was expected.

This is either irrelevant since neither of us have been talking about that and it has no bearing on the discussion (if by "expected" you mean "could do if they wanted to", as we've both said this already and it doesn't alter how Healers should be designed since it's only a bonus and not a requirement or expectation - which makes the use of the word "expected" strange...) or it's wrong (if by "expected" you mean "required" and/or "the Devs expected it and balanced around it" - as we've both now said, that wasn't true).

So I'm not sure why you're saying something that's either irrelevant (based on what we agreed on) or wrong (based on what we agreed on)...

"Expected" in this context referring to whether or not the community would engage with it and NOT in the context of whether or not the content demanded it.

No, that's not what it refers to in this context. As we've been discussing this entire time, "expected" in this context means "the Developers intended it and balanced content around a demand and requirement for it"; which we've both now said was not true, something we agree on.

Further, even if we use that definition, for much of ARR, the community (as we've also both said/agreed on) did not expect it as people were playing FFXIV like WoW early on anyway. The community was still fighting over the topic as late as SB. I believe you were the one who said in ARR this was true because people coming from other games brought those expectations with them, which as we can see from clear videos of that period was at the very least very prevalent in the community, if not outright the majority position for most of ARR and still was into HW. It was the majority of the playerbase (non-Savage players) for all of HW, too, as I'll discuss below relating to Cleric Stance.

ARR didn't really have enrages in the same way that we have enrages now, and healer DPS was not required.

Agreed.

I believe this indicates healer DPS was perceived by the designers as a reward for good healing.

Agreed with the caveat that this train of thought was still prevalent in HW, and based on Yoshi P's interviews even recently, still seems to be - something we both agreed on (as likely how Yoshi P himself feels - that he's an old school gamer and doesn't seem to hold the "Healers are Green DPS" mentality) the other day.

[Aside: We honestly do agree on a lot of things, just we draw rather different conclusions from the points of agreement...]

That said, I do know that the combat team royally fudged the testing of savage fights during HW, and it was a big deal that led to an apology and a promise to do better moving forward.

Agreed. In simple terms, Alexander was overtuned, which explains why the Devs said they didn't balance around Healer DPS in content that, at launch, essentially required it to clear. As Mr Happy once said, Gordias almost killed the game a second time. We also saw this (to a FAR lesser extent) with P8S on release. 1% goes a long way sometimes.

I wouldn't put it past them that healer DPS wasn't intended to be required but might have been on week 1 unintentionally, but I can't say from experience.

Agreed. This would make their on the record statements make sense, the Job design make sense, and the still pretty fresh ARR paradigm extend logically to HW. Like with SCH in ARR and like NIN's optimal rotation on release not being what the Devs intended, these appeared to be accidents rather than desired.

[Aside: Note that, as far as FFXIV's history goes, Gordias marked a pretty hard paradigm shift - or the start of one, anyway:

ARR and HW Savage raids were kind of designed to be elite content, and had a lot of wonky mechanics and such in them. But after Godias nearly killed the raiding community, it seemed to cause an internal reevaluation. The results of which led to the shift in the later HW content and, really, the establishment of the modern paradigm in SB. The Omega raids seem to flow directly into Eden into Pandaemonium. Note how they all have similar forms.

There's no weird trash fights like Coils or Alexander, no 5 fight sequence like Coils, trash fights were done away with, the reward structure was cemented into the modern day form, and they removed wonky fights like Gorilla transformations to punt bombs and the like. This is what leads to what I've been saying and my position that SB was really the birth of the modern paradigm.

It's also why WHM was really left in the cold because it still adhered to the ARR/HW paradigm in the "changing world" of SB around it until it was given its own hybrid update - the Lily system of ShB/EW - with 5.0 and 6.1 really ensuring that, while sticking to that older style GCD healing feel, it was hybridized with the newer form GCD damage with oGCD healing weaves to create a GCD Healer that used GCD damage spam but with GCD healing weaves that refunded damage to be roughly neutral in outcome. WHM retains a GCD healing focus, but it's merged with a GCD damage one (unlike AST/SCH which fully embraced the oGCD healing paradigm instead)]

and likely contributed to the decision to axe old Cleric Stance.

The reason Cleric was axed was because there was a schism in the community as a whole - outside of Savage Raids, I mean normal 4 man dungeon runs - about Healers doing damage or not. And unlike the Savage space, the bulk of the community seemed opposed to the idea. The reason was everyone knew a run that failed or wiped because a Healer was in Cleric at a bad time. I still remember running the level 50 dungeon in HW, Dusk Vigil, the first time. All these years later. The reason is I was in Cleric while doing solo stuff and quests and didn't realize it or think about it when I zoned in. The first trash pack, I was borderline oom blowing CDs (Divine Seal, Presence of Mind, Shroud of Saints for MP) and spamming Cure 2. I was rather "Holy cow, how am I supposed to heal a whole dungeon of this much damage?! Surely my gear from all these quests isn't that out of date!"...until I realized Cleric was on and turned it off. Had a mini heart attack that I still remember 7-8 years later, lol

Thing is, to slightly lesser Healers (once who didn't use CDs...), that would have been a wipe. And a micro version of this often existed if a Healer went into Cleric at the wrong time. So a lot of the non-Savage community saw GOING INTO CLERIC as griefing - not doing no damage as a Healer - because it increased the chance of wipes due to mistakes or poor timing or a DPS/Tank standing in bad at a poor time and so on. And the gap between Healers doing damage (applying DoTs and spamming their damage spells) with Cleric vs without was rather great enough many felt doing damage outside of Cleric was somewhere between weak and pointless.

So the pro-damage side was upset at Healers that did use damage spells but didn't use Cleric, or didn't use it enough, while the larger part of the community - again, not Savage raiders, which at the time was probably 5% or less of the playerbase - were upset at the Savage people demanding Healers do damage and do so in Cleric.

So the Dev solution to all this mess was to first change Cleric to essentially a DPS burst CD (like how Presence of Mind is used today), and then when ShB came out, to outright remove it since it had more often become a "use on CD" button anyway, and was still causing a gap between high and low skilled play that made encounters difficult to balance.

The idea was that by changing it (and then removing it), Healers could deal damage at their own pace, without trying to do things like pop Cleric to snapshot DoTs and so on, which Yoshi P also hoped would encourage casual Healers to feel better about throwing some damage when they felt up to it and hoped that it would reduce Savage raiders harassing other Healers about not having high Cleric uptime. (A similar argument existed regarding Tank stances, which were also removed at that same time going from SB into ShB)

That is why Cleric Stance will never return.

I recall forum conversations from HW, and it would very commonly refer to statements that effectively can be summarized as either "As a healer, you should be DPSing. If you aren't DPSing, you're griefing your team." or the other side of the fence that would go "Healers aren't supposed to DPS and I'm not going to." One of the two would go first, followed by the other. Then after both those statements came through, it would be followed up with more genuinely concerned players who'd say things like, "I try to DPS when I can, but sometimes I'm afraid of going into Cleric Stance, or if it's a new fight, I prefer to get comfortable with the mechanics before I try to DPS. It's not griefing." Then you'd have the first camp reassure those players saying "It's okay if you're learning a new fight, or you're trying to get better at healing. What matters is that you're trying your best to help your parties, but it helps to practice getting a few hits in now and then to get comfortable with it." Then the arguments would die down, and then start back up again.

This is mostly true, except for the last part. Often the first group would still be mad at the third group and would only marginally soften to "Well, as long as you're ONLY doing that while learning - we still expect you to go balls to the wall Cleric once you've gotten a few clears..."

It was an unhealthy and unstable armistice, which is why it would keep flaring up.

It still hasn't gone away, but at least now we don't have the Cleric hurdle anymore. So I suppose that's an improvement of sorts.

[ForsakenRoe]

Again for probably the hundredth time at this point, no, they have not. Certainly not "since partway through HW", a time where they outright said they were NOT using such a paradigm.

Even as late as 6.0, they weren't balancing that way - if they were, Misery would have been DPS neutral, and they wouldn't have reduced the DPS kits in ShB and outright removed Energy Drain. Only from "community" backlash did they reinstate Energy Drain in ShB (and half the complaints weren't ED being removed, they were that there was nothing to spend AF on if everyone was at full health - if they had given a AF spender shield like Divine Benediction or Celestial Intersection - that would have allayed a good chunk of those complaints), and didn't make Misery DPS neutral until 6.1. They literally are not, as Developers, paying attention to that or focusing on Healer DPS. It's ridiculously clear that they are not at this point.

Most encounters do not actually demand Healer damage for beating enrages. The only case this is true are early ilevel Savage clears and "Go play Ultimate" Ultimates. With a team of 99 DPSers, your Healers could probably only cast heals and your team clear the encounters with a healthy margin to spare. The Devs outright said in HW they did not balance around Healer DPS contribution, which means you can't claim they did so since 3.0 unless you're going to argue they were outright lying.

We aren't Green DPS. But I honestly don't get why you respond to someone saying "I'll quit healer when..." with effectively a "Well, that condition's met, you better quit now, then!"

Just cos the devs say something, doesn't make it true. Yoshi infamously has said in the past that MCH is perfectly playable at 200 ping. It wasn't, hence people asking for hypercharge and wildfire to get a stack system, which it only took THREE years to get. And not even in the same patch where they did it to DRK's Blood Weapon, which had the exact same problem re: ping. The SSS Dummy values fairly clearly (imo at least) that there's a certain value of Healer DPS expected. You're not hitting that 900ish DPS in Gordias by just 'DPS when you can', you'd have to change your healing plan around to forcibly make more time to DPS more. The Sac strat of A4S bought a lot more healer DPS uptime, as they would be able to ignore the Nisi DOT damage, gaining them GCDs to throw rocks with.

Yes I'm using early Savage and Ultimates, because that's the content the classes are balanced around? Nobody's been saying 'damn PLD is 11% behind DRK' because of parses of Lapis Manalis. Yes, you 'can' clear some previous savage fights with zero healer DPS. But iirc it was calculated that in order to do so, you'd need the other 6 players to be at least 75-80% players, AND be in BIS, that is, with the weapon that comes from the fight you're trying to clear. Taking the example of a 3rd fight eg P3S (so, unupgraded tome weapon, since upgrade comes FROM 3rd fight), I'd estimate the DPS/Tanks would need to be bordering on 90% gameplay to make up the difference. It was also found that Ultimate is mathematically not possible, even with 100% gamers it'd be too much missing damage.

When someone says 'what is the responsibility of this role', I think the best way to define it is 'what does the role primarily weave between it's damage filler?' For tanks, it's tank stuff like Mitigations. For healers, it's healing skills or mitigative effects like Kera/Soil. For damage dealers, it's... more damage, be it selfbuffs or OGCD attacks. But that's the 'in between stuff', we all have the 'filler', and that 'filler' is damage for all roles. We ARE Green DPS. The signs could not possibly be clearer, you're just burying your head in the sand to avoid seeing them. Just because you can zero-damage your way through your EX roulette runs doesn't mean it's the intended gameplay.

Cleric Stance was a clunky obstacle to allowing healers to DPS. It was not removed because 'it was making healers think they need to DPS', it was removed BECAUSE healers were meant to DPS, and the fact they could accidentally get themselves and their party killed, with a mistimed CS swap, was perceived to be a huge barrier to entry. By removing it, the barrier went from '5 seconds of lockout before you can heal effectively again' to 'you can move to cancel your DPS cast and go back to healing immediately'. I'm glad CS is gone, I enjoyed the dance, I got good at the dance, but I don't want it back. It's the illusion of 'complexity', with a very high margin for error while practicing, leading to people getting stressed and giving up on trying to learn it. SB had the right balance of 'accessibility' and 'complexity' for a launchpad to add to going into SHB. But it wasn't a rocket, it was a submarine, we expected it to go up up up over the expansions, and instead it's going down down down.

Finally, consider, Aggro is binary. You either have it, or you don't. Since this is the case, is it not theoretically possible to make the same argument for Tanks doing damage, that is, 'I dont need to do damage as a tank, as a team of 80+ gamers could make up the missing damage for me! All I need to do is use Provoke to get aggro, and the massive multiplier to emnity generation via tankstance means I will keep Aggro, even with just autoattacks!' If the OT never did damage, but the healers DID do damage (and were 80+%) it'd be just as 'carryable' as the deadweight healer example. Does this mean it was 'intended' back in ARR for tanks to just not use their damage rotation, because that's not their role? No, because 'do damage' is part of the tank role. If it wasn't, they'd have flat threat gen on their skills, like old Flash.

I recall forum conversations from HW, and it would very commonly refer to statements that effectively can be summarized as either "As a healer, you should be DPSing. If you aren't DPSing, you're griefing your team." or the other side of the fence that would go "Healers aren't supposed to DPS and I'm not going to." One of the two would go first, followed by the other. Then after both those statements came through, it would be followed up with more genuinely concerned players who'd say things like, "I try to DPS when I can, but sometimes I'm afraid of going into Cleric Stance, or if it's a new fight, I prefer to get comfortable with the mechanics before I try to DPS. It's not griefing." Then you'd have the first camp reassure those players saying "It's okay if you're learning a new fight, or you're trying to get better at healing. What matters is that you're trying your best to help your parties, but it helps to practice getting a few hits in now and then to get comfortable with it." Then the arguments would die down, and then start back up again.

Literally nobody is going to be mad at a new healer trying to get comfortable with their healing kit before dipping into damage, unless they don't know that person is new to healing. When learning a new fight, we drop insane amounts of damage to play safely, because you can't learn mechanics if people are dead. I don't mind a zero DPS healer in some content, like low level stuff in levelling roulette. But it's when we get to level 90 content, EX roulette dungeons and the like, and the player STILL doesn't use Dyskrasia or Gravity or whatever, it doesn't tell me 'I am still learning', because they're level 90. Instead, it tells me that they saw how little damage people take in most content, and rather than decide to take advantage of it productively, by throwing some damage to speed the run up, instead they've decided to take advantage 'selfishly'? 'lazily'? idk, opposite of 'productively'. Maybe I just never saw the appeal in 'not playing the game' and watching Netflix on the side, because I still don't have a second monitor in 2023

[Rilifane]

Again for probably the hundredth time at this point, no, they have not. Certainly not "since partway through HW", a time where they outright said they were NOT using such a paradigm.

Even as late as 6.0, they weren't balancing that way - if they were, Misery would have been DPS neutral, and they wouldn't have reduced the DPS kits in ShB and outright removed Energy Drain. Only from "community" backlash did they reinstate Energy Drain in ShB (and half the complaints weren't ED being removed, they were that there was nothing to spend AF on if everyone was at full health - if they had given a AF spender shield like Divine Benediction or Celestial Intersection - that would have allayed a good chunk of those complaints), and didn't make Misery DPS neutral until 6.1. They literally are not, as Developers, paying attention to that or focusing on Healer DPS. It's ridiculously clear that they are not at this point.

Most encounters do not actually demand Healer damage for beating enrages. The only case this is true are early ilevel Savage clears and "Go play Ultimate" Ultimates. With a team of 99 DPSers, your Healers could probably only cast heals and your team clear the encounters with a healthy margin to spare. The Devs outright said in HW they did not balance around Healer DPS contribution, which means you can't claim they did so since 3.0 unless you're going to argue they were outright lying.

They said that, indeed. And people love repeating their statement again and again no matter how much reality tells a different story. This statement is outdated and outright false.

We had Alexander Gordias that absolutely demanded healer dps from both healers or it was literally not possible to clear, not even past min ilvl/ entry level gear.
We also had e8s which, again, was impossible to clear even with several 99 parsing DPS players and a good comp without both healers dpsing as well if you didn't want to wait until you half-outgeared it. There was definitely no "healthy margin to spare". Then also got p8s part 2 which still needed healer dps even after the HP adjustment.
And nor should all 4 DPS players expected to perform that insanely well and make no mistake while sticking to stronger comps for an entire fight just so the healers can sit with their thumbs up their butts the majority of the time.

So yes, healer dps has been expected in endgame content for a long time now and this is not just true for 1st/ 2nd week clears.
Blindly taking their word for gospel will not suddenly erase Gordias, e8s and p8s part 2 from existence where healer dps is mandatory to even clear past min ilvl/ entry level clears very early into the tier. And I can assure you that you also need healer dps in Ultimates, even if your DPS players perform incredibly well despite Ultimates generally focussing more on survival, mitigation and executing mechanics well.
Yoshi said a lot of things that proved to be false like his infamous "WHM does all the healing while SCH brings the dps" when SCH actually outhealed and outdpsed WHM - by a mile. He's not right all the time and he sure wasn't right about healer DPS not being necessary.