Has anyone quit healing?

[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.