Latest Official Developer Statements About Healer DPS?

[Absimiliard]

Don't really care what the devs say on the matter. Healer not contributing to DPS and unwilling to cooperate when asked to = time to find a replacement. Perhaps even with an actual DPS if the remaining healer is up to the task of solo healing.

[Renathras]

A lot of people don't seem to read posts before replying to them. Let me help out with some bolding:

...I think the reality is that Yoshi P and the Devs don't want Healers to have to deal damage. Any fights that actually REQUIRE it in order to clear on patch are probably accidents/overtuned/unintended given all the statements, including the 2021 ones, to the contrary. The most charitable (to the DPS argument) way to look at it is that they want Healers to have an easy DPS "rotation" so they can easily achieve whatever DPS needs (if any) the encounters assume Healers will contribute. At worst to that argument, it means that they don't intend encounters to require Healer DPS and don't tune for it, so any Healer DPS at all is a bonus for the party.

I think they genuinely DON'T want healer gameplay to be based on doing damage or encounters tuned to it.

I DO think they're really bad at tuning, with P8S, specifically, being such an egregious case that they had to nerf it and make a public apology statement.

How you want to parse this is up to you, but I think the correct way to look at it isn't "they want Healers to do damage", I think it's more "they're really bad at tuning for Healers NOT to do damage", which is why they have the fallback point of the above "...at least the DPS 'rotation' is easy so that Healers can pretty easily meet the required amount of damage they need to contribute" when the Devs get it wrong. Which is almost all the time.

If they genuinely wanted encounters to be tuned around Healers doing a lot of damage, they could very easily say so. And considering we're talking Savage and Ultimates here, it's not like them saying so would be detrimental, so there's no reason for them to lie. The more likely take is they just suck at tuning the encounters well, and because it works, they just kinda roll with it.

EDIT:

See my response

I mean...SGE doesn't unlock at level 1. WHM doesn't have "cool lasers" aesthetic. The only thing WHM and SGE really have in common is that they're easy.

This is also true of SMN, DNC, and WAR.

The common thread to all these most played Jobs is that they are the easiest to play. I know it's hard to believe, but it seems that the general playerbase DOES like things that are easier. This doesn't mean everyone does. This doesn't mean that hard things should be removed. But it does mean that the general playerbase...does seem to like these Jobs, at least in part, because they are easier to play. Because that is the thing that's in common across all of them.

"But WAR is OP!"; but WHM isn't.
"But SMN does more damage than RDM!"; but less than BLM.
"But DNC has a dynamic rotation!"; but WHM and SGE do not.
"But WHM, WAR, and SMN start at level 1!"; but SGE and DNC do not.
"But DNC and SGE start near the level cap so less to level!"; but WHM, WAR, and SMN do not.

What do they all have in common, though?

They're all relatively easy to play, and widely considered the easiest in their roles.

For additional support, BRD was more played when it was considered "the easy one", and RDM was more played than SMN and BLM in ShB, when RDM was "the easy one". SAM and RPR are considered the easiest Melees by most, and are also the two most played (SAM more than RPR in JP, RPR more than SAM everywhere else; but in each region, the OTHER of them is 2nd place). And considering the Human tendency to want to just chill or take the paths of least resistance, it boggles my mind why people are so adamant at insisting this isn't or can't be true.

(Also: Not all, but most, of the stuff in the Healer forum is also opinion, not fact that would render her opinion invalid. It's more a "either could be true, or possibly some combination of them both")

I’d love to have more healing, buffing or anything other than DPS but let’s be honest here. Those who do not want to DPS as a healer lost this argument expansions ago.

That isn't really true. It's only required in some content (specifically Ultimates and early tier Savages), and the debate seems both alive and well AND the Devs' official statement siding with the non-damage focus.

I mean, I say this as a person that Glarespams like everyone else, but the argument isn't over, and people aren't going to move on until Yoshi P actually makes a definitive statement to the contrary.

Adding more DPS buttons does not affect the rest of the player base at large.

Yes, it does.

The only people that say this are people who want more DPS buttons added, implying a bias. Everyone opposed to adding more DPS buttons seems to feel it will, in fact, affect them. And we all know that it will and that they aren't talking about only doing casual content. At best, it's a red herring, possibly a straw red herring, and at worst, an absolute lie.

I do agree that SGE isn't really "damage focused" anymore than the other Healers, though. It COULD be, due to how Kardia works, but it...isn't.

Every single word that leaves your disingenuous tongue makes me want to go bite a rock.

She's right, though. You must bite a lot of rocks when confronted with the truth...

This is where the DPSing healer became the norm at all levels of endgame content rather than the exception.

"at all levels"?

It was really ShB when that happened. SB still had a lot of healers not DPSing in Expert, and it wasn't the norm. ShB is also when wall-to-wall pulls became the norm and healer DPS was simplified. THAT'S when healer DPS became the norm, when they were all unified to a DoT + spamnuke.

[Maltothoris]

Actually I would say it's more a pride thing. Look at how long it took for them to change living dead to being a useful invuln despite 9 years of people asking, increasing asylum's radius from hw to Shb after Sacred Soil became the better of the two, or them overlooking Aero 2 potency change back in 6.1. Heck, look at the changes in 6.1 most of those mp changes to help healers at the lower levels were mostly the cost on the offensive spells with the exception of regen meaning it would be more mp efficient to use your atttacks rather than your heals.

[Aravell]

That's kinda the paradoxical situations healers are currently in

Can't increase healing requirements because "it'd stress the newbies"
Can't increase dps options either because "it'd stress the newbies"
so apparently the only option that doesn't "stress the newbies" is either pressing 1211111111, or do nothing at all. Riveting gameplay, outstanding, genius, and not patronizing at all.

I honestly don't understand this justification. By the time a player gets to the point where healing requirements or their damage matters, they're no longer a new player and should not be treated as such.

[Absurdity]

I honestly don't understand this justification. By the time a player gets to the point where healing requirements or their damage matters, they're no longer a new player and should not be treated as such.

CBU3 probably still considers max level players to be newbies as long as they haven't stepped into the "hardcore™" content, which feels incredibly patronizing to me but that's a different discussion.

Actually I would say it's more a pride thing. Look at how long it took for them to change living dead to being a useful invuln despite 9 years of people asking, increasing asylum's radius from hw to Shb after Sacred Soil became the better of the two, or them overlooking Aero 2 potency change back in 6.1.

Which is a far more worrying idea, because it reeks of "You think you do, but you don't." and we all know how that turned out.

[Asari5]

i mean isnt it the same with their opinion about healers HAVE to be magical? and with the casters cant wear metal so lets only give them robes.
they seem to have that stance on several things and they are very slow and unwilling to change these things

[Supersnow845]

i mean isnt it the same with their opinion about healers HAVE to be magical? and with the casters cant wear metal so lets only give them robes.
they seem to have that stance on several things and they are very slow and unwilling to change these things

And even in the very rare case they do let healers wear metal (laws order is the only class specific example I can think of) they have to add a frilly dress extension to it just so you don’t forget you are a healer and healers wear robes

[Sebazy]

"at all levels"?

It was really ShB when that happened. SB still had a lot of healers not DPSing in Expert, and it wasn't the norm. ShB is also when wall-to-wall pulls became the norm and healer DPS was simplified. THAT'S when healer DPS became the norm, when they were all unified to a DoT + spamnuke.

Got any data to back any of that up? Or is this just your heresay again?

You didn't see every healer DPSing in dungeons in SB, but it was the turning point where it became more common to see healers doing *some* dps rather than none at all. Why? Cleric Stances removal.

Also trying to suggest that wall to wall pulls became the norm in Shadowbringers is comical, are you forgetting how players would routinely struggle in dungeons like Bardams and Doma? Do you honestly think they were single pulling? Wall to wall pulls were absolutely the norm in level cap dungeons. Perhaps I should use the word 'Majority' if you can't comprehend 'the norm'? Does that work for you?

Oh and since I'm not you and don't base my views on random misguided opinions, here's some sources to back up my claims:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...do_you_prefer/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._to_wall_mean/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ing_big_pulls/

I'm not going to pretend they are all unified in that wall to walls are the only way to do these dungeons, but you can see the sentiment especially if you look at who's talking about leveling dungeons and who's referring to Experto.

I'm sorry if I offend anybody with this comment but I'm going to be brutally honest. It's a little frowned upon to pull small in any heavensward/stormblood content. The ONLY times I think it's acceptable to pull small is when you're doing super low level dungeons with green leafs or you tried a big pull but your party was too bad. Pulling small shouldn't be your default.

This quote pretty much sums up the sentiment back then perfectly. You might not share it, but you were not the majority if you didn't.

https://youtu.be/VGHkOSvNMx8?si=X-S2cmetk-A9kaKI&t=347 - Oh and a random recording from Stormblood, excuse it starting from after the first boss, Hell's Lid was one of the few dungeons that wouldn't actually let you double pull the first trash packs.

In leveling dungeons it was common sense to gauge your party before going wall to wall, but in the endgame at the level cap? Unless your healer was incompetent or the tank had confidence issues, you were more likely than not pulling wall to wall. The 2 packs > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > 2 packs > boss etc recipe was long set in stone at this point.

[UkcsAlias]

The tone of it, at least to me, seems to aim more for a 'we don't want to force people to do damage as a healer if they're not comfortable', more aimed at the 'feel', and not so much about 'raid tuning'. When they say 'we do not want to make healer DPS mandatory', though, that part seems like it can be construed as referring to raid tuning, and if it is referring to the maths rather than the 'feeling', then they've missed the mark entirely for 6 years

The thing is, if as healer you can dps a lot, it indicates the team is doing well. And being able to do meaningfull dps in that case rewards that. If the dps would be meaningless, why even bother being a healer then? Now while it is less than a dps, its still meaningfull dps that can make dps tresholds easier to reach.

The real problem is healing demands in most duties. In most duties you arent being forced to heal at all. Power creep makes this worse at an excessively quick speed making duties just 2 patches older trivial. Its just very bad balance towards healers.

If healers were more reliably demanded to heal, the 1 dps button wouldnt have been an issue to begin with. The real problem is lack of healing demands which causes healers to focus to dps. And that also made the '1 dps button' a problem. You want variety in actions. 90% of the time using dps is not that. Even if you are using that 1 button 50% of the time for your GCDs (which is still a lot) it would be fine, since healer dps is about optimizing your gcds to enable as much 1 casts as possible. And dont underestimate a reduction from 90% to 80% in GCD dps casts. This is still a doubling of other abilities being demanded! 90% vs 60% requires 4x as much GCDs for other purposes. Thats how much a bit more healing demands could affect DPS casts.

[Aravell]

The real problem is healing demands in most duties. In most duties you arent being forced to heal at all. Power creep makes this worse at an excessively quick speed making duties just 2 patches older trivial. Its just very bad balance towards healers.

SE tried to solve this in Abyssos. Their method of solving lack of healing required is to make raidwides that deal more than the max HP of the party so you just die unless you mitigate it, which(to no one's surprise) made double shield healer a much better option than 1 shield + 1 regen.

I don't think the fight designers truly understand how to make a proper healing-intensive fight, which is weird, because Barbariccia is a good fight design that fits the bill of "more healing requirement" rather than Rubicante/Golbez and their mechanics which can just kill you from full without mitigation.