Has anyone quit healing?

[Absurdity]

It could be that the current tier was a step too far for many players and they just stopped.
It could be that veteran healers are sick of the awful gameplay loop of healers devolving down to a single button.
It could be that this expansion just sucks.

My guess is that it's a combination of all 3, granted the last one is entirely subjective.


Many veteran healers got sick of the awful gameplay and the healers that remained were absolutely not prepared for the increase in difficulty this tier because why would they? Healing requirements have been a joke for the entirety of ShB and Asphodelos, that's over 2 years of solving incoming damage with a few oGCDs and wearing out your 1 key or standing around and doing nothing for 60-90% of a fight.

[ty_taurus]

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)...

Stop putting words in my mouth. You hate when others do it to you, so stop doing it to others. Literally since the first post, all I've been saying is that if you asked the devs back in ARR times if they thought healers would use DPS spells in group content, the response would be "Yeah, most will probably use them at least a little bit." You misunderstood the context and made it your mission in life to be right about something you read incorrectly. If you want to want to have a cordial discussion, stop trying to open up conflict for no reason. The FFXIV designers EXPECTED that most healers healers would DPS on some level back during ARR but didn't build around that just like Hoyoverse EXPECTS that some players will whale on Genshin Impact, but didn't build their game to require that. The point of me saying that was to reiterate that this was a statement about ARR and not HW.

The reason Cleric was axed was because there was a schism in the community as a whole...

I said "contributed to" not "is the only reason why." The big reason was probably because of that schism, but healer DPS could cause fights to be cleared far more quickly than they may have wanted for savage fights, and either needed to start considering it to ensure the average party experiences those mechanics, or heavily frontload the mechanics they want a savage fight to deliver.

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..."

You have an incredibly bias perspective. This is an MMO. In an MMO, all players are expected to contribute to shared gameplay experiences, like running a dungeon or doing a raid. Actively choosing to not help when you otherwise can is rude and disrespectful behavior on any role, because you are literally wasting the time of other players. Your time is not more important than everyone else's. In FFXIV especially, most people are far beyond understanding for those that are new or learning healers. If you are genuinely trying your best, then most of us are more than happy to help take your time and practice, offering any advice that you ask for, but if you don't attack because "I don't want to" then you're disrespecting all the other players who are forced to queue with you. You're no different than a BLM only using blizzard spells because "I want to be an ice mage." If you want to roleplay as a healer that never attacks, then find a roleplay group to do your dailies with. None of us signed up for your RP session. It's no different than respecting others in a public space, like not taking up more than one parking space, or not being on the phone while you're speaking to a cashier.

[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.

[Renathras]

Whatever the reason, the Devs need to find and address the issue or it will get worse.

True, but the issue is tricky because of all that. If you make Healing more damage focused, you alienate and lose the people that don't like DPS rotations. If you make it less, you lose the people that do. If they aren't sure of what the problem is (as Yoshi P's most recent, exasperated "I thought we were doing what you guys want; what DO you want??" kind of indicates), they risk making it worse if they make sweeping changes since they could do more of whatever it is people don't actually want. And the issue is, there are a lot of different Healer player types, so what some may like may alienate others, meaning the solution needs to be a wide net to catch as many as possible. Going full in any direction doesn't help the situation if you pick up 10% more Healers but lose 30%, for example.

What they also really care about is player behavior.
Anything that causes exclusion or anti-social tendencies is a big no-no.

Definitely this. It's come up enough times and it's specifically why Cleric was removed and Healer DPS kits were stripped down.

Just cos the devs say something, doesn't make it true.

It doesn't mean they get it right or do what they're intending, that's true. But if they state their intentions, they likely aren't lying - so they're being truthful about their intentions (most likely), they're just failing at them. Also, need to do some more up to date calculations. You're using the most overtuned content in the game's history. So overtuned the Devs even apologized for it.

The problem with your "weave" argument is that Tank mitigations aren't GCDs. The closest to that is Passage of Arms. There's no "Press this GCD to do mitigation; it locks you out of dealing damage" button in the game. And the only Tank GCD that isn't damage related is Clemency. By contrast, Healer Jobs have at a bare minimum (SCH) three (lolPhysic, Adlo, and Succor), and at a Maximum, WHM has 7 (lolCure 1, Cure 2, Cure 3, Regen, Medica 1, Medica 2, Afflatus Solace, Afflatus Rapture). So there's not really a good comparison there other than we can say that the only Healer with more DPS GCD buttons than healing GCD buttons is SGE with 5 vs 4 (Dosis, Eu Dosis, Plegma, Toxicon, Dyskrasia, and Pneuma vs Diagnosis, Eu Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Eu Prognosis); SCH is equal with 3 vs 3 (Broil IV, Ruin 2, Art Of War vs Physic, Adlo, and Succor). WHM is 4 vs 8 (Glare, Dia, Misery, Holy vs the 8 above), and AST has...what, 3 DPS GCDs? 3 vs 5 (Malefic and Combust vs Benefic, Aspected Benefic, Benefic 2, Holos, and Aspected Holos)

[Much as I generally dislike the aesthetic, I might have to play with AST a bit more. I hate the way Cards as oGCDs work, though. If they were GCDs, maybe...just make Draw deal a Malefic's damage to your target, if hostile (abilities like Holmgang can judge whether targeting an enemy or not...), and Play a GCD that doubles the damage of the next Malific and said buff stacks up to 3 times...]

Cleric was removed because some people were harassing Healers for not DPSing, not because "healers were meant to DPS", and because the Devs thought Healing was too taxing of a role driving people away from it and needed to be made more friendly to attract and retain a stable Healer population.

As for Tanks: Agro was the intent in ARR. That's why they had a Tank Stance and Agro combo. It was literally to manage Agro - something that was stripped from THEIR role going into ShB as well.

And be careful with absolute statements: People were getting mad at Healers back then. Again, this is why Cleric was removed. Further, people do now. I've seen more than one Reddit post complaining about Healers in low level dungeons not dpsing "because they don't even need to heal". So clearly, some people are and have.

They said that, indeed. And people love repeating their statement again and again

Probably because when you're trying to figure out what someone intends to do, and they say "I intend to do X", it pays to reference that.

Note the discussion was about what the Devs intended at the beginning of the game (ARR and HW), not what they do now, nor even if they succeeded at their ARR/HW intent. The fact of the matter is, they said that their intent was Healers not to be expected to do damage and they even apologized for the content that was overtuned to the point of requiring it. Meaning their intent was for Healers to not have to do damage and any they did be a bonus, not a requirement.

Stop putting words in my mouth.

What words did I put in your mouth?

You and I have both now agreed that the Devs likely intended Healer damage (if any) to be a bonus, not a requirement, and did not balance or tune around it, and that they could do it if they wanted to or not. Which words did I put in your mouth in that quote?

Literally since the first post, all I've been saying is that if you asked the devs back in ARR times if they thought healers would use DPS spells in group content, the response would be "Yeah, most will probably use them at least a little bit." You misunderstood the context and made it your mission in life to be right about something you read incorrectly.

Okay, I genuinely have to ask...this was your first statement, the first lines of it, in this discussion stream:

That said, this is my guess as to what they wanted.

When ARR released, they wanted healers to dance between offensive windows and healing windows.

Maybe you forgot what your first post here was. But that's not saying "Yeah, we figure they'll use some damage buttons here and there". That's you saying they expected - wanted - Healers to be dealing damage, not just "use them at least a little bit" unless you have a VERY different meaning behind "dance between offensive windows and healing windows" that is "just toss out the occasional Ruin or Stone and not really do it much". Most people wouldn't define "dance between offensive windows and healing windows" as "use 5 Stones per encounter or so". You went on to say:

the actual content doesn't really create an environment for that playstyle to thrive, and I think the design team can't really do that without creating a schism between new and old content,

...which is you saying that the content has always been this way - not merely post HW.

As I said before - and offered you an olive branch over you're spitting in my face right now instead of taking - maybe it was just a misunderstanding where you could tell your message wasn't getting through and you could have said, at any time "I'm not saying the Devs expected healers to DPS, I'm saying they thought of it as optional". Instead you referenced the CNJ questline to say they intended for them to do it, and you insisted several times the game and encounter design has always been this way, even though it clearly was not. You even later said (agreeing with me) that it was different back then, in ARR particularly, with no Enrage timers and few oGCD healing options.

Maybe you meant this entire time "The Devs just thought people might toss the occasional damage spell on Healer and gave them the flexibility and freedom to do so, but didn't intend for it and realized many Healers wouldn't do it."

Since you won't clearly state your opinion, I'll ask you now, since I don't want to put words in your mouth but what your mouth is saying keeps changing:

Is that your position?

In this thread, you've said all of (Paraphrasing) "The Devs intended for Healers to deal damage", "The Devs EXPECTED Healers would DPS", "The Devs just gave Healers the freedom to deal damage as a bonus if they wanted to", "The Devs just thought Healers might throw out a damage spell here and there", and "The Devs (and players at the time) didn't know what they were doing regarding Healers and damage". While some of these can be true at the same time (namely any of the first four + the last one, or the first two may be true together), many are not compatible (1 and 2 aren't compatible with 3 and 4). So which is it?

I need you to make up your mind and pick one so I know which I'm arguing against. You've "danced" between them so often, it shouldn't surprise you I'm accidentally "putting words in your mouth" because your mouth has said all of these in at least some form.

Be clear on which it is and I won't misunderstand you.

I'm not trying to open up conflict, I'm trying to pin down what the heck you actually think and are arguing about here, since you've agreed with everything I said (while saying I was wrong - clearly not getting that you were restating my position) and also attacked that same position.

In an MMO, all players are expected to contribute to shared gameplay experiences, like running a dungeon or doing a raid.

And.
They.
Do.

"Contributing" isn't "dealing damage". That's one form of contribution, but not the only one. If it was, no MMO would have any role besides Damage Dealers.

but if you don't attack because "I don't want to"

It's amazing how often you trot out this straw man dead horse that's been beaten to where there aren't even molecules left in the dirt pile where once was blood and before that the corpse of straw.

You love arguing against a point no one has ever made in this discussion.

Maybe if someone was making the argument that they wanted to never ever under any circumstances press a damage button while healing, you'd have a point. But who has argued that point?

I'll do the mature thing (again) and ask you (again) because you didn't answer any of the last times I did so:

What do you think my argument is?

(And, btw, this IS the difference between us and why I don't put words in your mouth as you do with me - if I think I misunderstand you, I ask you what you mean. You don't ever give a straight answer, but I make the effort. You not giving a straight answer is what leads to the "putting words in your mouth" since you refuse to clarify what words you actually mean to come out of your mouth. And likewise, when I think you're misunderstanding me, instead of making my argument several different ways with you obviously (to me) misunderstanding every time and then trying to "gotcha" you later for it by calling you wrong and saying you misunderstand me, I ask you what you think I'm saying so I can clear up the misunderstanding. Your goal seems to be the gotcha, my goal is fostering discussion and understanding of my positions and why I think they're important. Though, again, you don't give a straight answer. It shouldn't be hard to answer the question "What do you think I'm saying/arguing?", yet you've consistently refused to do so.)

I even offered you an olive branch that maybe we've just misunderstood each other and are actually in agreement but didn't realize it. You didn't quote or reply to that post, instead you continue to attack and insist I'm misunderstanding you (while not admitting it's you that are misunderstanding me), even when I already beat you to that punch by saying maybe we just had a misunderstanding.

All you had to do was say "Yeah, I guess we just misunderstood each other. We do agree the Devs did not design or intend Healers in ARR to be Green DPS that did damage."

That's it!

You've even already said this, you just wouldn't do so without attacking me as being "wrong" for holding the EXACT SAME POSITION that you stated was right when YOU said it.

You could even say it right now!

All you have to do is stop insisting I'm wrong about something you literally agreed with my position on and the argument's over.

Here, I'll even quote it again for you in case you missed it the last time:

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.

And note that was me replying to this post:

Oh, that explains why you're so wrong. 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. 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.

It's okay though, now that you know why you're wrong and you can accept that, I think we could move on to a more fair discussion, yeah?

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.

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

Setting aside how I'm trying to be conciliatory and find some manner of peace while you...were not...

...if this post was your actual position, then we have nothing to argue about, because WE AGREE! Congratulations!

"I never said the design team balanced content around healer DPS." + "it was certainly balanced without healer DPS initially." + "where healers had the freedom to attack, and would do so at times, and this extra damage would be a bonus, not the standard." = LITERALLY MY ARGUMENT THIS ENTIRE TIME.

In reply to you saying this: "What part of those examples prevents you from DPSing? "

You're asking the wrong question.

I didn't say any of that prevents people from DPSing.

I'm saying it didn't require people to DPS, from which we can infer the Dev intention was not to require Healers to DPS. It's really that simple.

And in reply to you saying this: "If the game design didn't want you to DPS "

Where did I ever say the game design didn't what you to DPS?

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.

I swear, it's as if you don't even read my posts before replying to them.

...which...WOULD explain the misunderstandings...

[fulminating]

The problem with your "weave" argument is that Tank mitigations aren't GCDs. The closest to that is Passage of Arms. There's no "Press this GCD to do mitigation; it locks you out of dealing damage" button in the game.

Diamondback, mighty guard, chelonian gate if poa counts, avail, dragon force.

[ForsakenRoe]

The problem with your "weave" argument is that Tank mitigations aren't GCDs. The closest to that is Passage of Arms. There's no "Press this GCD to do mitigation; it locks you out of dealing damage" button in the game. And the only Tank GCD that isn't damage related is Clemency.

Cleric was removed because some people were harassing Healers for not DPSing, not because "healers were meant to DPS", and because the Devs thought Healing was too taxing of a role driving people away from it and needed to be made more friendly to attract and retain a stable Healer population.

As for Tanks: Agro was the intent in ARR. That's why they had a Tank Stance and Agro combo. It was literally to manage Agro - something that was stripped from THEIR role going into ShB as well.

Except tanks DID have a GCD that would cost them damage. It was called 'tank stance'.

'The reason Cleric was removed was to facilitate healers having less barriers standing in the way of practicing doing damage alongside healing. Cleric would cause issues if mistimed, meaning people did not want to risk even practicing with it. So SE removed the obstacle allowing people to DPS more freely in SB.' That's the explanation I'd give for why Cleric was removed. You say that it was because people were forcing healers to DPS, but if that were the case, removing Cleric wasn't going to suddenly stop the push for more DPS and revert the accepted playstyle towards 'healers shouldn't have to DPS', it'd do the opposite and make people push MORE for healer damage. After all, if the main hurdle of Cleric is gone, what would be stopping a healer in endgame content from pressing damage buttons in the 40s gap where the boss doesn't hit them?

And again, Aggro is binary. You have it, or you don't. Think of Classic WOW. A Warrior would use Sunder Armor to generate threat against a boss. It generates 350ish points of threat, if I remember right. If that tank is at 5000 points of threat, and the next highest player is at only 2500, then what does the Warrior spend the Rage on, more Sunder Armors that don't apply more stacks, don't do damage, just more threat they don't need? Or do they start using Heroic Strike for a while, while everyone's catching up on threat, to do more damage and kill the boss faster? 'Get aggro' was never the intent for tanks, it was 'Keep just enough threat generated to keep aggro, then push damage'. That's why our tankstances were a toggle, rather than a passive buff like in WOW, that's why they had combos that weren't their Aggro combo, that did more damage. PLDs weren't spamming Rage of Halone in HW because it's their role to generate threat, they were using Goring and Royal to push damage. Only in the very scuffed ARR, where they only had ROH, were they using 'just their aggro combo'. And WAR was also scuffed as hell, with Butcher's Block coincidentally being the strongest hitting of the combos. Maybe it was intended by the devs that the tank with aggro at the time was meant to turn on tankstance, and the other to turn it off. Would certainly explain why the enrages were so lax back then.

But the problem is, we got better. Way better than the devs anticipated. We learned how to push more damage as healers, to drop tankstance and use our mitigations to cover the loss in defense. All so we could push more damage, to help improve our group's chances at clearing the fight. When players have a chance to optimize something, they will. And when they do, the devs have to consider that, so they started tuning content around the fact people would be pushing more damage. If they didn't, and just tuned around the idea that at least one tank would always have Tankstance up, and that the healers would do minimal damage, then any groups that went balls-out on damage would beat the enrage by literal minutes, leading to a very unsatisfying raid experience for them. I'm sure you heard about how Yoshi and the devs were surprised groups cleared UCOB, as they expected they'd have to do nerfs to the fight to make it more clearable. But we've seen time and time again, no matter what challenges the devs put in front of players, there's some who will step up, 'break their limits' and improve in skill beyond what was previously imagined possible. Maybe that sounds a bit cringe, but this IS an FF game, it's pretty on brand for the series

Maybe that's why I get in the mood I do about this stuff. To me, 'I don't want to DPS as healer, and SE should make it so healers are focused on healing' reads the same as 'I don't want to improve, and everyone else should be dragged down to my level so I'm not made to look bad'. If SE did make healers super focused on healing, there'd just be players who push the limits, and make a healing plan that covers everything so efficiently, they still find time to push more damage. No matter what happens now, it's too late for this game's design I think. People have the expectation of 'do more damage'. Even if the healing required was doubled, tripled, x10'd, and the DPS output of healers was halved, quartered, the fact remains: If you can do damage, you should do damage. Even if healers were made to do 600dps instead of 6000 because SE shotgunned their kneecaps with nerfs, people would STILL do damage on healers. And since there's a non-zero amount of DPS that would be coming from the healers, the devs would have to design around that. You'd have tougher HPS requirements, with the same expectation of 'do damage btw'.

You can make me 'heal more' all you like. I'm still gonna throw rocks and lasers. And if there's no time to throw rocks and lasers, I'll make time. That's our role as healers.

Diamondback, mighty guard, chelonian gate if poa counts, avail, dragon force.

Chances are they miraculously 'dont count' because BLU isn't really a tank. Or that they don't count because BLU isn't really a job full stop.

[fulminating]

Chances are they miraculously 'dont count' because BLU isn't really a tank. Or that they don't count because BLU isn't really a job full stop.

My opinion is just as valid, so I'm going to quickly reject the 4 posers as nothing more than jumped up dps.

I can't really see a way around accepting blue mage though, the devs literally gave it tank mimic in on top of the mighty guard/tank stance. I'll just mention white wind being a gcd aggro tool in passing because that's probably going to come up sooner or later.

[ForsakenRoe]

My opinion is just as valid, so I'm going to quickly reject the 4 posers as nothing more than jumped up dps.

I can't really see a way around accepting blue mage though, the devs literally gave it tank mimic in on top of the mighty guard/tank stance. I'll just mention white wind being a gcd aggro tool in passing because that's probably going to come up sooner or later.

Oh I wasn't discarding the BLU skills. Guess my sarcasm didn't come across so well. I did mention the Tank Stances like Grit and Shield Oath though, so it's not like BLU's the only 'tank' that had a GCD defensive that costed damage. Of course, that little might get glossed over for various reasons. 'Oh but Tank stance was just for aggro, not defence' (even though you could and would flick it on for a single GCD as an absolute last resort defensive), 'WAR's was OGCD though' (doesn't change the fact Inner Beast was less damage than Fell Cleave, at the benefit of giving 20% mit for 6sec, and Defiance/Deliverance had a 10sec lockout before you could swap back), or 'WAR's doesn't count cos Unchained negated the damage penalty' (still cost you the 5% buff from Deliverance during it's duration). You know, those kind of predictable excuses for why stuff clashes with the narrative being pushed

[Renathras]

Diamondback, mighty guard, chelonian gate if poa counts, avail, dragon force.

I don't think BLU counts. If it did, we'd also be talking about BLU Healers and no one here would be complaining because BLU Healers have basically everything they're asking for. They have DoTs, they have a lot of access to damage spells, though their heals are GCD, they're pretty "side content" "to do when you aren't doing your more important and more primary job: Damaging the boss"; the front and center focus is on "Green DPS". Well...BLU DPS, if you will. If BLU Healers were allowed in general content, the people that don't like current healers would presumably be pretty happy with it.

Except tanks DID have a GCD that would cost them damage. It was called 'tank stance'.

It has been a while, but was Tank Stance EVER a GCD?

That said, that's for Agro, not for mitigation. I guess people could try to "flash" it for mitigation, but that was stupid since it had the CD before you could swap out of it. Basically like Cleric Stance. Which is why it, too, was removed. But no, that isn't a valid comparison; because there isn't one. Again, the closest thing is Passage of Arms, IF you actually hold it. Because those Tank stances don't exist anymore, so how can you use that as a comparison in the modern game, exactly?

I didn't say it was people "forcing healers to do dps".

Cleric was removed because some people were harassing Healers for not DPSing, not because "healers were meant to DPS", and because the Devs thought Healing was too taxing of a role driving people away from it and needed to be made more friendly to attract and retain a stable Healer population.

Please read my posts you reply to before replying to them. I tend to state my positions in them, so you don't need to tell me what I said (incorrectly) when what I actually said isn't that. It was the harassment the Dev team sought to end. Unsuccessfully, but it was their intention.

Agro is binary, but when games are based around it, it's actually important. It's not Tank has 5000 agro and next person up has 2500. It's Tank has 5000 agro and the balls to the wall BLM has 4995 and is about to use Flare. WoW had that kind of gameplay (as did FFXIV), and Tank players tend to actually like the threat management aspect of Tanking. The three mainstays of Tanking in MMOs (or games in general) are "maintaining an agro lead", "positioning the boss", and "using mitigation properly to survive heavy hitting attacks". When games start dropping those, Tank players tend to get frustrated. Tanks in HW and SB would use their threat combo if they had someone catching up to them in threat, and would use Tank Stance when in lower gear (because of the added 20% defense) as well as to keep an agro lead on DPS, since most Statics funnel their drops to their highest DPS members early on so they can push prog. It was once they were fully geared and gear started filtering to the Tanks that they could spend more and more time in damage stance, using their threat combo only when needed to keep their agro lead. A lot of Tanks found that interplay somewhat fun, and those that didn't simply spent more time in Tank stance.

If you haven't looked at Tank discussions lately, FFXIV Tanks are almost as annoyed at Tanking in FFXIV as you guys are with Healing. They feel like they've had two of their legs stripped away, since boss teleporting and massive hitboxes - or worse, wall bosses - render positioning the boss pretty meaningless in modern FFXIV encounters, and Threat is a non-issue if you simply press stance before entering the encounter. The only thing they have left is mitigation and damage ("Blue DPS"), and it turns out a lot of Tank players are as mad about being "Blue DPS" as Healer players about being "Green DPS". Mitigation has mostly become a "use oGCD/mitigation plan", and they've been shoehorned into being "DPS lite", and they don't like it, either. Someone even added up the number of wall bosses and "teleport to re-center" bosses and found they are something like 4 out of 5 EW bosses across all content (including 4 mans and 24 mans)

And when they do, the devs have to consider that

Which is also partly why they removed Tank/Damage stances and (much less so) Cleric stance.

I'm sure you heard about how Yoshi and the devs were surprised groups cleared UCOB,

The irony is, P8S turned out the opposite way. They really ought to be tuning the Ultimates like they tuned P8S on launch and not the other way around.

To me, 'I don't want to DPS as healer, and SE should make it so healers are focused on healing' reads the same as 'I don't want to improve, and everyone else should be dragged down to my level so I'm not made to look bad'.

And I think this is why you don't get it.

Think of something you don't like doing. Maybe you don't like basketball but like football. Maybe you don't like shooting guns but like archery, or don't like either but like martial arts, or don't like that either but like cooking or yoga. So say you signed up for a yoga class and people start demanding you shoot guns and play basketball in it. You might reply, "I signed up for a yoga class, not a shooting class or basketball class, because I don't like basketball and I hate guns".

Many people sign up for Healers because they like supporting other people. Where you say you don't want to be a healing and buffing "b---h", many people actually enjoy being a support character helping their team overcome challenges. Some people want to use the power tools and others are entirely content being the go-fer that brings parts to them to do the job. And it takes all kinds to make the world function. An Army of only soldiers is a poor army - what do the eat? Where do they get their ammunition? Who plans the objectives for them to take? Without logistic and operational support and direction, all their "dps" in the world won't win a war.

To use the above example, you "don't want to improve" at shooting, because you hate guns. But you DO want to improve at yoga, because you love yoga. So saying they don't want to deal with a complex DPS rotation isn't them saying they don't want to improve. It's them saying they don't like shooting guns/complex DPS rotations. They WANT to improve, they just want to improve in other areas. For example, back in SB, I mainly played WHM still (despite having SCH/SMN to level cap in every expansion starting with when I started the game, in ARR), and I finally sat down and decided I wanted to learn SCH as well. I watched videos, I learned the difference between oGCD and GCD and between Spell/Weaponskill and Ability, Potency vs Pet Potency, and how to make some macros. I put a lot of skills I hadn't been using in more active places on my hotbar and got out of the WoW mentality of "If it has a CD greater than 30 seconds, it's for emergencies", shifting to "If it has a CD of less than 90 seconds, use all the time, and if it has a CD of 90 or more, try to use on CD with only a few rare exceptions (Benediction and Tank ultimates, basically)"

I worked hard to improve my HEALING to where I never had people dying unless they just kept standing in bad beyond the ability to heal them, and I pushed to using more and more oGCDs to heal to the point I could free up GCDs for other things like damage if I wanted to.

This wasn't me trying to get better at a DPS rotation (to this day, I still suck at trying to refresh DoTs before they fall off, despite trying all kinds of things to make it easier to see and trying to note boss mechanics used about the time they need refreshing so I can remember them), but it WAS me trying to improve.

I was trying to improve at yoga, not shooting. Which is why I picked the yoga (Healing) Role not the gunnery (DPS) Role.

Additionally: You also are stuck on the strawman/canard, no matter how many times it's shot down.

Who, exactly, has argued to remove Healer damage spells?
Who, exactly, has argued that a Healer player should be barred from ever doing damage?

Not I.

So who?

And while there could be healers that make their healing efficient to push damage, I think that's why the Devs have Healers traditionally doing so little damage (even now, AST's personal damage, for example, is pretty low compared to literally any DPS in the game - they aren't "half a DPS", they're more like 1/5th to 1/4th of one; you don't count their buffs for that, since that's not them dealing damage themselves). If Healers did little enough damage, then it wouldn't matter since that would only change clear rates on the margins with parties that have an average skill high enough to clear anyway. The balance point for the Devs is ensuring Healer damage potential is still high enough for them to effectively clear solo content.

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At the end of the day, I suppose it doesn't matter, though.

Chances are they miraculously 'dont count' because BLU isn't really a tank. Or that they don't count because BLU isn't really a job full stop.

Nothing "miraculous" about it. BLUs aren't considered Tanks by the Devs and you can't use them in any current content. Again, if we could, you guys wouldn't be complaining about Healer damage kits since you could play on BLU and have a more robust one (while healing) than most DPS in the game.

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Aside:

I think I rather like playing AST in PvP. It's basically a pure healing/buffing Job in there and I love it. And unlike WHM, it doesn't require you to stupidly run into melee range for REASONS as a squishy clothy. I find where the action is and heal and buff the hell out of my party. First time playing it I was 5th in heals (after a WHM and 3 Tanks), second time I was second (behind only a Tank); seriously, Tanks do absurd healing in Frontlines, lol

Lots of assists, too, and even the odd knockout somehow (probably from Gravity...)

I think I may have found my new Frontlines main...

[ForsakenRoe]

And while there could be healers that make their healing efficient to push damage, I think that's why the Devs have Healers traditionally doing so little damage (even now, AST's personal damage, for example, is pretty low compared to literally any DPS in the game - they aren't "half a DPS", they're more like 1/5th to 1/4th of one; you don't count their buffs for that, since that's not them dealing damage themselves). If Healers did little enough damage, then it wouldn't matter since that would only change clear rates on the margins with parties that have an average skill high enough to clear anyway. The balance point for the Devs is ensuring Healer damage potential is still high enough for them to effectively clear solo content.

95%, Hegemone (since it's 100% uptime), NDPS so it doesn't factor in any buffs. AST's more than half of a DPS. Yes it's BRD and DNC, but it's a DPS nonetheless. This is all very easy to find if you bother to go look. And I think you missed the important point: It doesn't matter if the devs make healers do 50% or 5% of a DPS class's damage output, we'll keep on throwing rocks. I'm not the only one, other high end players will too. And that means the devs will have to tune encounters around that fact. They can't stop us, it's too ingrained in the playerbase.

And yeh, Shield Oath and Grit were both GCDs (spells, in fact, they'd aggro sprites in eureka) up until SHB. I'd have thought you'd know that, since you played since 2.3. But please don't try the whole 'idk if you saw tank threads recently'. I'd expect it to feel pretty condescending to anyone, but it's doubly so to me. I was a tank main when I first started doing higher-end content in SB. I've seen 4.1 WAR replaced by current ungabunga. I've seen 4.3-4.5 DRK removed and turned into this WAR-esque copy because people couldn't handle pressing Dark Arts. I know all too well about the 'boss teleports to middle' issue, the 'wall boss' issue, the removal of threat as a mechanic, the removal of the risk/reward gameplay stances brought. Do you know WHY those tanks, are annoyed at being Blue DPS? I'll tell you my reason, and likely the reason most others feel that way. It's because we were always Blue DPS. Always. But that was hidden, masked, obscured, by the extra responsibilities we had. We didn't JUST 'do damage', we positioned the boss, we managed aggro more closely beyond just 'provoke', we managed our mitigation plan more tightly rather than just 'kitchen sink the TB' because autoattacks were more of a threat back when we didn't selfheal hard enough to render healers redundant in dungeons.

Now our bonus defense is passive so the risk-reward is gone. Now aggro management is gone because tankstance threat multiplier is insanely high. Now positioning the boss isn't a thing, because the boss positions itself. All the layers of the 'complexity gobstopper' have been removed, and we're left with the center: do damage.

But this thread isn't about tanks. It's about healers, and how people are quitting en masse. Something needs to change, the current trajectory for healer complexity is not sustainable. And I'll say it again: The devs can try to make it so 'theres no opportunity to do damage', we will make opportunities. The only way to stop us is to jack the HPS required so high, most of the playerbase can't keep up. Very counterproductive. That's why I'm on the side of 'damage complexity'.

Yoshi said 'I don't get it, we gave you guys what you asked for, what do you actually want' because some people, who have no foresight or consideration for the longterm ramifications and consequences of such a change, asked for 'more healing required'. I've said before, I'd be fine with 'more healing required' as a change to the game. I have the skill to keep up. But massive swathes of the playerbase has been whiplash'd into the realization that they can't keep up, even with a bump as small as the one we got. Yoshi's issue is that either he doesn't realize there's multiple 'schools of thought' on what the best direction for healers is, or that he does realize that, and just followed the side that is loudest, not necessarily the one that is 'correct'. Now, I don't think there is a 'correct' in all of this. But there's definitely an 'incorrect', and we saw it this tier.