How MUCH healing can non-Healers do?

[Renathras]

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Let's see...

I agree with you on the creativity/team issue (I think I made that much more explicit in that other thread).

I disagree with DPS having a "tangible and noticeable payoff". For me, I can tell when I'm healing well, because I feel less pressure. That is, if I'm using my healing abilities well, I don't feel stressed and I feel like the fight is going smoothly. On the other hand, I can tell when I'm not using my CDs well because I see health bars dip more than I'm comfortable with or I have to fill in with more GCD heals. That I can feel. I couldn't tell you if I was doing more DPS on any Job, honestly. Oh, I can feel a few screwups like on RDM if I have a touch of lag and start a slowcast Verthunder because the client hasn't registered the Dualcast buff yet (though that's a latency issue, not a skill issue), or on WAR, I can tell if I see my Storm's Eye buff falloff that I screwed that up. But I can't tell a noticeable difference - on any Job - of "the clear was faster" or whatever from my own DPS. I'm not saying no one can, but that's not at all tangible or noticeable to me.

I think I get your argument somewhat. I think. If I'm understanding it right:

1) Healing is bracketed - you do too little and people die, you do too much and everyone's health bars are full so its overhealing. Vs DPS which isn't bracketed, the lowest end is 0, and the sky's the limit. So you're suggesting the range is unbounded for damage, but the Devs have only a finite window, no matter how wide they could potentially make it, to have healing requirements fall in and still be viable. I slightly disagree - as people here say all the time, a 0 DPS Healer means the party wipes to Enrage - so there's clearly _A_ lower bound, but I do understand the idea that you CAN overheal but you CAN'T "overdps". And that the difference between doing "the minimum" and "the maximum" for DPSing can be (effectively) infinitely large while healing can only be as good as filling bars to 100% as, after that point, additional healing is wasted. (Even if a Healer Job had some mechanic which shunted excess healing into shielding, for balance reasons, the shields could only be so big and so would be the finite cap once THEY are at 100%; same problem, just slightly extended.)

2) You think that the extra DPS buttons output (in terms of clear times) should really be mainly (?) noticeable for soloing, where the difference in damage output vs fight time would be noticeable, recognizing that it generally won't be noticeable for group content just due to how low Healer damage is vs everyone else's and how it can only make so much of a difference due to being a smaller percent. In other words, a BLM going from 70 to 90 percentile makes a noticeable difference in a 4 man clear while a Healer going from 70 to 90 wouldn't be nearly as noticeable, if noticeable at all.

3) You believe making healing genuinely difficult in casual content wouldn't be possible without driving people away from the content, but...I'm guessing you think that because there are no enrages in casual content, there is no such thing as a DPS requirement, so the Glarespam (or even 0 DPS) Healer vs the damage dealing one both would still clear the content? That it's unneeded and thus not a challenge is irrelevant to the (for lack of a better term, and I don't mean this as an insult in this instance) tryhards, as they can still feel personal satisfaction from their entirely needless DPS being optimal, whereas they do not derive that same joy from having optimal healing. [This actually deserves a bit more discussion, I think...] That is, they enjoy doing maximum DPS even if it's entirely irrelevant, but they wouldn't enjoy doing maximum healing, so to speak. Hm, I don't think I'm wording this right...but maybe you get the general idea. That DPSing doesn't have to be "difficult" because it has an open ceiling people can continue to push out further while healing does not?

That is: That doing more damage is "fun" even if it's completely unnecessary but that doing more healing (or more efficient healing) if completely unnecessary is not fun. That DPS is what is fun, not healing after a certain point, even when both are equally irrelevant.

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I think this is a distinction for a lot of us. The bracketed part is where we differ. I derive no joy at all from doing maximal/optimal DPS (not even on a DPS or Tank Job that actually DO have optimal rotations). I honestly barely even notice it. On the other hand, I like planning out and using my heals efficiently. That's what I derive joy from, even if it's entirely unnecessary for the content. What I'm gathering more and more is that a lot of people don't enjoy making their healing as efficient as possible, or that that IN ITSELF is not an enjoyable end to them. If they do it, they want to be rewarded with something else (like Semi and Forsaken often say, they want to be rewarded with an engaging DPS rotation), as the efficient and optimal healing is not ITSELF a reward to them, but doing maximum DPS is a reward to them. This is in stark contrast to my own position, which is that I get my dopamine hit from knowing I'm healing efficiently, and that IS the reward to me. That's what makes me happy. Glarespam is irrelevant, my happiness comes from knowing I'm doing my role/job - healing - efficiently. The only side-effect that's relevant at that point is that it feels smoother and less stressful, but that isn't even the reward.

It's why I like things like different MP cost heals and GCD healing, since I can then optimize in a lot of ways. Like maybe I have two people that need healing. If two Cure 1s would do the job, then that's more MP efficient than a Medica. The MP gap between Medica and Medica 2 is so low that Medica 2 is always the right choice; this annoys me SO MUCH you wouldn't believe - because I want to optimize and there's no optimization there. And so on. I remember the WoW days of Holy Priest downranking spells, and that was a form of optimizing to extend your MP bar as long as possible. That sort of thing I enjoy, while you guys seem not to, as far as I can tell?

It seems, if I'm understanding right, that for you guys, healing well and efficiently isn't itself enjoyable or rewarding, it's only if it lets you do something else - damage, apparently? - that it's rewarding, and only if that something else - damage, apparently? - feels rewarding to do?

Definitely a different paradigm. Does kind of make that "real healers" thing seem more apt than I would have thought. All this time I've been operating under a misconception, I think, based on that. I guess, given how people resist the idea of it being said they "don't like healing", I've been confused why people are so much wanting to DPS. But I think maybe that's the breakdown; that people only like healing as far as working out the puzzle, but once they have that, they aren't really interested in it, they want that something else instead.

As for Savage and up, you probably would need to rely on those rotational buttons to some degree in order to get an early clear, but gearing up may eventually enable the extreme healer to get their clear.

I feel like the tuning on that is where the rubber meets the road of "does this work or not". (Also, I've seen a LOT of enrages about 3-5% health in Extremes, so that isn't nothing.

I guess my perspective on this is it largely seems to be a case of "asking for more work to do the same thing", which seems...annoying more than enjoyable. (Though you already know I support making some kind of Holy boosting ability to give it a use in single target encounters and to make Holy work like Cure 3 as far as targeting goes - I laid that out pretty well before, so I'm sure you remember it?)

I've died to holmgang before because a dps decided to nuke the mob I was tethered to, although that's more user error than anything. I think dark mind is more than a fair trade for equilibrium, unless the healing is what you're referring to? In which case that's on SE for removing dark knight stb abyssal drain. This is just the whole "more they're similar the more obvious differences are" deal though so eh.
I like warrior being the hp tank, even after the 2.1 rework. Give bloodbath/bloodshower back to marauder and get rid of the fixed potency heal on hit for bloodwhetting/nascent. Give it triple the hp of the other tanks and less %mitigation tools. Let me live though tyrant's unholy slap thingy through raw hp alone. And hey that'll allow those sylphies more hp bar to refill.

I always thought it was cool how SCH/PLD synergized well and how WHM/WAR synergized well back in ARR. WHM could more readily fill WAR's bigger health bar/HP sponge-ness and SCH's mitigation paired well with PLD's to smooth their damage intake and keep the healing light on that pairing.