Healer role design change?

[Dzian]

1) More damage and dmg you cant prep or know in advance:

easy just break away from scripted encounters and start to randomize bosses more.

alternatively slow down the power creep. part of the problem is the way new content it released at an ilevel that many players are already 15-20 levels higher than. so healers already over heal and everyone else already takes less than intended damage.

2. Rework the cleansable debuff UI to make cleansable debuffs far more visible, and make cleansing a more common choice..

This would only work if they made those cleansable debuffs more impactfull. the reason noone bothers with Esuna even when they can is because that paralysis or poision effect on a player only lasts ~5 seconds anyway. and in many cases those poisons cant even outpace the passive hp regen on a tank.. or a paralysis effect thats highly likely to wear off before it even procs once.

They were designed from the ground up to primarily deal damage.

nope they were designed to heal. the only reason they had DPS spells at all was for solo play. thats why they never accounted for healer damage in dps checks and stuff..

the issue being they dont want players to get too hurt, because it puts too much pressure and stress on healers and they wont play the role or something..

[ty_taurus]

This would only work if they made those cleansable debuffs more impactfull. the reason noone bothers with Esuna even when they can is because that paralysis or poision effect on a player only lasts ~5 seconds anyway. and in many cases those poisons cant even outpace the passive hp regen on a tank.. or a paralysis effect thats highly likely to wear off before it even procs once.

You mean like that list I posted directly below that point in my last post? Also poison/bleed/other DoTs are impactful in savage at least.

[Semirhage]

nope they were designed to heal. the only reason they had DPS spells at all was for solo play. thats why they never accounted for healer damage in dps checks and stuff..

the issue being they dont want players to get too hurt, because it puts too much pressure and stress on healers and they wont play the role or something..

This take on healers is entirely at odds with how RPGs are designed. It's a surface-level, strict trinitarian view that makes zero sense when you take the existence of skill gaps and combat encounters ending with damage output into account.

"Only for solo play", good lord.

[Sebazy]

nope they were designed to heal. the only reason they had DPS spells at all was for solo play. thats why they never accounted for healer damage in dps checks and stuff..

the issue being they dont want players to get too hurt, because it puts too much pressure and stress on healers and they wont play the role or something..

To clarify on this a little:

This line of thought is kind of out of date now and has been for a while. SE's raid design approach shifted quite a lot with Sudo moving be it for better or worse. There are examples of duties where the healer is forced to DPS either for a personal damage check (eg: O5N Phantom Train) or simply that the entire fight is clearly and provably tuned with healer DPS being taken into account (eg: E8S Shiva).

I'd say it's a fair point that healers were initially designed around healing first in ARR because not enough attention was paid to our damage potential, this lead to frequent occurrences of healers actually out DPSing proper DPS jobs in dungeons with regularity through ARR and HW. Now SE clearly pay much more attention towards keeping our damage in check even if the kits themselves have gotten more simplistic.

I have an idea for it. Rather than making it a 90/120s CD that is flat, bland, boring, just throw it out with no thought to it's use, make it a lily spender. That way, it's still damage neutral (you get blood lily from it), but it has to be thought about, as it's going to cost you a Rapture. Picture the scene, a Doom that can be cleansed by getting players to full HP OR Esuna'd, everyone is at not-full-HP. Do you spend the lily on the Esunaga and remove the dooms easily, or do you use it on a Rapture to heal people, and remove the dooms that way, while also restoring HP? What if the Rapture is not enough to get them to full? Then the Esunaga would be the better option because the doom would kill them, and you'd have to 'waste' a GCD heal to get the rest of the HP filled. Decisionmaking moments

Too neat an idea to get buried on an old page within 10 minutes. I like++

[Aravell]

There are examples of duties where the healer is forced to DPS either for a personal damage check (eg: O5S Phantom Train)

Slight mistake here, it's O5N that requires healers to do damage (Yes, even if you got Siegfried, he may have 1 HP but you still need to hit him). O5S healer ghost was the one with mega-bloated HP that you can barely chip down, it periodically explodes for a lot of damage and also takes a % of HP damage to itself, you can clear the healer ghost entirely by just healing (mostly because you're barely even chipping their HP).

[Sebazy]

Slight mistake here, it's O5N that requires healers to do damage (Yes, even if you got Siegfried, he may have 1 HP but you still need to hit him). O5S healer ghost was the one with mega-bloated HP that you can barely chip down, it periodically explodes for a lot of damage and also takes a % of HP damage to itself, you can clear the healer ghost entirely by just healing (mostly because you're barely even chipping their HP).

Ooop, ta for the correction, fixed++

[Shurrikhan]

nope they were designed to heal. the only reason they had DPS spells at all was for solo play. thats why they never accounted for healer damage in dps checks and stuff..

the issue being they dont want players to get too hurt, because it puts too much pressure and stress on healers and they wont play the role or something..

This hasn't been true in XIV, even as far back as 1.0, nor for virtually any other MMO. Even in Everquest, healers did more than heal, even if their rDPS contribution was given by indirect (but still non-healing) means, such as through damage, mobility, anti-knockback, anti-stagger buffs, etc.

Moreover, you can absolutely further incentivize healing without decreasing healers' reaction windows between initial damage taken and the victim's death. I'm not advocating for such a system, but it wouldn't be hard to have HP reduced below 50% to have a proportionate impact on throughput, such that more rapid and responsive healing has a commensurate throughput (e.g., rDPS) advantage. Such in turn increases the value of preemptive heals, decreases or even inverts the rDPS opportunity cost of timely GCD heals, and gives more reason to bank the occasional oGCD heal.

"But that healing is done for party DPS! Healing shouldn't be about party DPS!" you may complain. Well, you're shit out of luck, because so long as an encounter's objectives is to reduce the HP of some particular unit(s) to 0, every single form of output in the game will be weighed by its contribution to reduced average time-to-kill -- i.e., party DPS. Just as all damage would be weighed by its contribution to reduced average time-to-100%-heal if an encounter's objective were to increase the HP of some particular unit(s) to full.

[vetch]

"But that healing is done for party DPS! Healing shouldn't be about party DPS!" you may complain. Well, you're shit out of luck, because so long as an encounter's objectives is to reduce the HP of some particular unit(s) to 0, every single form of output in the game will be weighed by its contribution to reduced average time-to-kill -- i.e., party DPS. Just as all damage would be weighed by its contribution to reduced average time-to-100%-heal if an encounter's objective were to increase the HP of some particular unit(s) to full.

That's a hell of a strawman.

The stress and the fun of triage healing is when something is doing its best to kill my party members, and I have to make decisions and adjust on the fly to help them survive. I've never had any illusions that I was helping them survive so they can go on to foster orphaned kittens; it's always been keeping them alive so we can do damage to make the enemies not alive.

But when the stress is not there, the fun is not there. One-button instant HP fixers that you can more or less pick from randomly for the scheduled half-minute damage interval are just. Boring.

[Shurrikhan]

That's a hell of a strawman.

That wasn't a general "you". It was to the person quoted, whose past comments I was referencing.

The stress and the fun of triage healing is when something is doing its best to kill my party members, and I have to make decisions and adjust on the fly to help them survive. I've never had any illusions that I was helping them survive so they can go on to foster orphaned kittens; it's always been keeping them alive so we can do damage to make the enemies not alive.

But when the stress is not there, the fun is not there. One-button instant HP fixers that you can more or less pick from randomly for the scheduled half-minute damage interval are just. Boring.

100% agreed.

I'd add to this that the occasional variably-valuable offensive GCDs (such as a DoT at exactly its time to be refreshed), too, can add to those elements of engagement without so quickly being geared out of.

I really like intensive triage healing, but when we enter all but Savage content vastly overgeared and underpressured, and quickly gear the pressure even out of Savage... we should have some longer-lasting levers made available for healers to pull on, too, and concerning design with the downtime, too, is a good way to provide that.

[vetch]

If you think that, you haven't read much Dzian. That wasn't a general "you". It was to the person quoted.

Ah. Sorry then. Haven't seen their healer takes but I've agreed with them before on general combat matters, like for example how attacking feels more emotionally satisfying when the enemy actually reacts to your attack (e.g. stuns, interrupts from damage taken, even just visibly flinching) rather than me throwing 60 papercuts a minute while the million-HP striking dummy stands there stone-still and takes it.

Everyone has blindspots, I guess.