For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Shurrikhan]

The most 'healy healer' is Mercy.

She's one of the least healy healers, actually, at least unless forcing tempo with Valkyrie frequently while playing some manner of swarm comp.

• Generally her playstyle at higher ranks is pocket-support, with most of her skill expression coming from knowing exact TTK thresholds and, especially, having blue beam up for each shot but as little as possible of the time between shots (while still ultimately prioritizing keeping the supported DPS alive, of course). (This forms a skill-ceiling much like Bapt's damage-weaving, but requiring knowledge of the player being pocketed rather than just maintaining a rhythm.)
• And in lower ranks, Mercy is as often a baiting distraction or a stone one's team launches at the deep flank to clear out enemy snipers as any sort of pure healer. Her HPS rises relative to other healers only because its nigh impossible for her to healing to miss or overheal; her theoretical maximum, though, is quite low compared to the likes of Ana, Bapt, or Lifeweaver. (Of those, Lifeweaver has the least generally applicable damage, but also the highest DPS of any support (excluding Zen's in-practice advantages of Alt-Fire burst, and assuming both are benefiting from Discord's damage amp), and Ana the greatest range and versatility but the lowest DPS ceiling.)

Or, to put it another way, OW just doesn't have any hero who, if played correctly, would be an analog for a pure or even pure-ish healer. Instead, they're all tactics-enablers first and HPS second. Which is fine over there, since that game actually cares about geometries, synergies, differences between burst damage / kill-potential and total damage per minute, etc.

[Korbei]

My preferred non-healers are RDM and PLD because I suck and benefit from the ability to cure myself to cover for my own mistakes.

[ty_taurus]

As we previously worked out, as long as the majority of it's oGCDs are healing-based, then yes it counts as a healer I'd say. Though WHM is a special case because the devs want it to be the 'GCD based healer' for identity reasons or something

I don't think the OGCD criteria is a good example. The only criteria a healer needs to be classified as a healer is to have sufficient HP restorative capabilities expected for the particular game in question at all stages of the game. What I mean by that is, in FFXIV PVE, healers are expected to bring enough healing throughput to sustain the party without KOs for the entire duration of any given fight when mechanics are done correctly without any additional healing provided by other roles. This means alone in 4-man content, or with a partner in 8-man content (where both healers are capable of meeting each other's throughput). So even though Dancer has two forms of healing, for example, it cannot use them often enough to reliably sustain a 4-man group by itself or match another healer in an 8-man group. So Dancer is not a healer, but a support with sustain utility. Now, we do have cases where those lines have been blurred by jobs like Warrior in places, but Warrior isn't always capable of that, which is why it still doesn't fully qualify as a true "healer." Not that the amount of non-healer sustain isn't encroaching on healer responsibility, but it hasn't quite burst the dam wide open yet.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think the OGCD criteria is a good example. The only criteria a healer needs to be classified as a healer is to have sufficient HP restorative capabilities expected for the particular game in question at all stages of the game. What I mean by that is, in FFXIV PVE, healers are expected to bring enough healing throughput to sustain the party without KOs for the entire duration of any given fight when mechanics are done correctly without any additional healing provided by other roles.

So if a job simply passively smart-healed its party every server tick just enough to get through all content (with a co-healer), that'd still sufficiently be a "Healer"? (If we just buffed WAR's external healing agency a tad further -- is it then a Tank, Healer, Healer-Tank, or Thaenler?)

If not, it feels like gameplay/kit should definitely play a part in that labeling.

[ty_taurus]

So if a job simply passively smart-healed its party every server tick just enough to get through all content (with a co-healer), that'd still sufficiently be a "Healer"? (If we just buffed WAR's external healing agency a tad further -- is it then a Tank, Healer, Healer-Tank, or Thaenler?)

If not, it feels like gameplay/kit should definitely play a part in that labeling.

Naturally, good game design aims to ensure that all jobs feel like they are evenly balanced and interesting to play as. The fact that Warrior has so much potential healing that it pushes against that boundary is the result of unhealthy game design and job balance. But if a job has the potential to provide enough healing to support a 4-man group comfortably or work with any other healer and provide competitive healing throughput while doing so, then why wouldn't you refer to that job as a healer regardless of what the rest of their kit looks like? Why should a kit that both heals and provide something else be disqualified as a healer? Because they're overqualified? "Healer" is someone who heals. That's all the label means.

[Shurrikhan]

Naturally, good game design aims to ensure that all jobs feel like they are evenly balanced and interesting to play as. The fact that Warrior has so much potential healing that it pushes against that boundary is the result of unhealthy game design and job balance. But if a job has the potential to provide enough healing to support a 4-man group comfortably or work with any other healer and provide competitive healing throughput while doing so, then why wouldn't you refer to that job as a healer regardless of what the rest of their kit looks like? Why should a kit that both heals and provide something else be disqualified as a healer? Because they're overqualified? "Healer" is someone who heals. That's all the label means.

Perhaps because it still puts out more damage than non-DPS or more tank-y-ness than a non-tank than it puts out more healing than "has lots of healing, but isn't quite a 'healer'" non-healer?

If the criterium is solely "Is its output sufficient to do X," you could easily have a job meet that criterium for all three Roles, especially with the way things have been going of late.

[ty_taurus]

Perhaps because it still puts out more damage than non-DPS or more tank-y-ness than a non-tank than it puts out more healing than "has lots of healing, but isn't quite a 'healer'" non-healer?

If the criterium is solely "Is its output sufficient to do X," you could easily have a job meet that criterium for all three Roles, especially with the way things have been going of late.

That's true, but that's where game balance comes into play. You could design a job that does all 3 things competitively, but that isn't exactly healthy to the balance of a game. Regardless of how they engage with DPS, both healers and tanks should not deal as much damage as DPS jobs, because if they did, then why bring a frail DPS that cannot sustain themselves when you could bring a tank who deals as much damage but also has considerably greater survivability or a healer who deals as much damage but provides significant levels of sustain to the entire party?

There does need to be balance, but rules like "Can only have X amount of DPS actions per healing actions" are arbitrary. Why does it matter so long as you can do the job your role is responsible for competitively with the other jobs of the same role? And it's not like I'm trying to advocate for a job that just has one 400 potency AoE regen that lasts 60 seconds and is otherwise all DPS focused, or anything extreme. I just think the potential outlook of looking at a job and saying "Mmmm... No. You have 1 DPS cooldown too many, you're not a healer" is ridiculous.

[Shurrikhan]

I just think the potential outlook of looking at a job and saying "Mmmm... No. You have 1 DPS cooldown too many, you're not a healer" is ridiculous.

I don't think anyone but Gemina and maybe Ren would remotely think this... unless the job goes so far as to have the largest part of its complexity and agency wrapped up in (not-indirectly-healing) DPS while all other "Healers" still have the largest part of theirs centered on healing and/or its play and optimizations (i.e., the considerations one undertakes, its pacing, where one looks and what one pays attention to, etc.) feel far more akin to that of a DPS than a Healer.

But I do think people usually go for particular roles because of the gameplay fulfilling that role would involve if not neutered/oversimplified. While I'm okay with a far more DPS-centric healer, if it plays more similarly to a DPS and has none of the additional/unique considerations engaged with on other Healers but simply happens to put out more HPS than DPS and to be sufficient for any content alongside another healer... that's not a Healer to me so much as a DPS (albeit a fundamentally mismatched / poorly design-targeted one).

Call it homogenizing if you like, but I feel like any "Healer's" kit would have wasted lucrative opportunity if it didn't include means of engaging with the considerations and optimizations commonly seen among the healing gameplay of 'enjoyably-designed' healers, just like a tank who lacked the ability to respond deliberately to incoming damage (instead just having a flat self-sustaining rotation atop extremely high passive eHP so that as long as it keeps damaging it'd be invincible) would, imo, waste lucrative opportunities for that "Tank" kit.

[ty_taurus]

I don't think anyone but Gemina and maybe Ren would remotely think this... unless the job goes so far as to have the largest part of its complexity and agency wrapped up in (not-indirectly-healing) DPS while all other "Healers" still have the largest part of theirs centered on healing and/or its play and optimizations (i.e., the considerations one undertakes, its pacing, where one looks and what one pays attention to, etc.) feel far more akin to that of a DPS than a Healer.

But I do think people usually go for particular roles because of the gameplay fulfilling that role would involve if not neutered/oversimplified. While I'm okay with a far more DPS-centric healer, if it plays more similarly to a DPS and has none of the additional/unique considerations engaged with on other Healers but simply happens to put out more HPS than DPS and to be sufficient for any content alongside another healer... that's not a Healer to me so much as a DPS (albeit a fundamentally mismatched / poorly design-targeted one).

Call it homogenizing if you like, but I feel like any "Healer's" kit would have wasted lucrative opportunity if it didn't include means of engaging with the considerations and optimizations commonly seen among the healing gameplay of 'enjoyably-designed' healers, just like a tank who lacked the ability to respond deliberately to incoming damage (instead just having a flat self-sustaining rotation atop extremely high passive eHP so that as long as it keeps damaging it'd be invincible) would, imo, waste lucrative opportunities for that "Tank" kit.

There was a past discussion about what qualifies a job as being a healer having something to do with having more healing OGCDs than non-healing OGCDs which was the original point I was challenging in Roe's post on the former page.

As for how a healer approaches healing as a responsibility, sure, a healer should generally try and appeal to gameplay elements that revolve around their healing, but that ultimately comes down to good game design. There are millions of ways you could design a job in this game, and not all of those ways will be fun to the general player. But I'm not trying to talk about the specific design of a job, just that what defines a role should be about what it offers, not what it isn't allowed to offer.

Take for example Genshin Impact. You have Kokomi, a hydro catalyst (magic) user who's the strongest healer in the game. Her skill summons a jellyfish that heals her team and nearby allies while dealing damage to nearby enemies. Her burst places her in a stance that increases the damage of her basic attacks and causes her to heal her team and nearby allies while she attacks. But you also have a character like Bennett, a pyro sword user who is also considered one of the best healers. His skill charges up an attack that can hit up to 3 times creating a pyro explosion. His burst hits enemies in an AoE with pyro damage and sets down a field that increases the attack of allies standing in it while also rapidly healing all allies whos HP is below 70%. These are arguably the two best healers in Genshin, and one of them doesn't play like a healer at all, but that shouldn't discredit the fact that he's not only one of the best healers, but one of the best characters period. Bennett is consistently the most commonly used character in the Spiral Abyss (Genshin's version of Savage) being used by 87.3% of all players who clear the Spiral Abyss.

[Shurrikhan]

But you also have a character like Bennett, a pyro sword user who is also considered one of the best healers. His skill charges up an attack that can hit up to 3 times creating a pyro explosion. His burst hits enemies in an AoE with pyro damage and sets down a field that increases the attack of allies standing in it while also rapidly healing all allies whos HP is below 70%. These are arguably the two best healers in Genshin, and one of them doesn't play like a healer at all, but that shouldn't discredit the fact that he's not only one of the best healers, but one of the best characters period. Bennett is consistently the most commonly used character in the Spiral Abyss (Genshin's version of Savage) being used by 87.3% of all players who clear the Spiral Abyss.

I worry that may be more an example akin to the old Support discussion, whereby you have a "Support" Healer who's nonetheless able to meet all healing requirements but then just offers way more than anyone else atop that (in the previous case, because the others' outputs could more easily go to waste, while the those of the "Support Healer" could not.[/QUOTE]

As for how a healer approaches healing as a responsibility, sure, a healer should generally try and appeal to gameplay elements that revolve around their healing, but that ultimately comes down to good game design.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't trust a "Healer" who doesn't have a kit capable of nuance or engaging gameplay in the healing itself (which could nonetheless produce a powerful, healing-sufficient, and enjoyable job on the whole) not to be worse for the game as a whole for its inclusion unless we similarly scooted every healer in a similar direction -- a la OW -- which would still likely be worse for those who'd really enjoy healing if it were just tuned to a point wherein it could again be engaging for more than just the initial "still solving the fight" experience of Savage and Ultimate.

Again, I'm one of those most against pure-healing Healers. But I do think it would be a waste of what forms of engagement the game could offer on the whole if actual engaging/naunced healing gameplay were pushed out by jobs who could manage those capacities without engaging with such (especially if they could, as one would expect, therefore do more on the whole from what agencies they add outside of healing despite being tuned to meet all healing requirements individually).