Latest Official Developer Statements About Healer DPS?

[Gordita]

In 2017, Yoshi-P went on record stating the developers do not expect Healers to contribute to DPS.* Like so many things, some people liked this and some people disliked this, but regardless it provided some valuable insight into the way the devs approach the design of content and roles.

My question is: a lot of time has passed since 2017, so I'm wondering if since then Yoshi-P has ever gone on record as having either altered or reinforced this stance. If so, I'd be grateful if someone could provide the source for whatever he said about it.

I'm just curious to know what the devs have officially said about this sort of thing. Thanks for the help on that!

*Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5la_nyC5BO0&t=282s

Homie said healers don't have to dps while he was cooking sage in the back , laughing

[Melichoir]

In 2017, Yoshi-P went on record stating the developers do not expect Healers to contribute to DPS.* Like so many things, some people liked this and some people disliked this, but regardless it provided some valuable insight into the way the devs approach the design of content and roles.

My question is: a lot of time has passed since 2017, so I'm wondering if since then Yoshi-P has ever gone on record as having either altered or reinforced this stance. If so, I'd be grateful if someone could provide the source for whatever he said about it.

I'm just curious to know what the devs have officially said about this sort of thing. Thanks for the help on that!

*Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5la_nyC5BO0&t=282s

Devs are caught between a rock and hardplace. Essentially they got two options right now with Healers:

Focus Healers on just healing - This would mean that raid damage must increase substantially so that Healers are spending MORE time doing heals and sustainting/protecting the group, so they would have less of a need for DPS skills

Reduce focus on Healers healing - This would mean raid damage would either have to decrease, or increase self sustain by everyone else, so that healers woul essentially have time to commit to a dps rotation

Neither answer is actually all that good. Casual players seem to lean towards the former, while more higher end players tend to lean into the latter. From my perspective though, it feels like theyre testing the waters currently with the former, as a lot of 'higher end' content feels a lot more damage heavy, requiring more healing from support. And if they wanted healers to be more damage focused, I figure theyd have to give more sustain to everyone else to compensate for lack of healing while adjusting healing to be more OGCD based and adding in offense abilities (think how tanks operates, where most of the skills are offense with some oGCDS for defense buffs))

[Aravell]

Devs are caught between a rock and hardplace. Essentially they got two options right now with Healers:

Focus Healers on just healing - This would mean that raid damage must increase substantially so that Healers are spending MORE time doing heals and sustainting/protecting the group, so they would have less of a need for DPS skills

Reduce focus on Healers healing - This would mean raid damage would either have to decrease, or increase self sustain by everyone else, so that healers woul essentially have time to commit to a dps rotation

Or they could go with option 3: Put equal importance on the healing kit and the damage kit while raising healing requirements

Just boost healer damage up to tank levels so their damage output will settle to about the same as the percentages now even when they're forced to GCD heal.

[ty_taurus]

Devs are caught between a rock and hardplace. Essentially they got two options right now with Healers:

Focus Healers on just healing - This would mean that raid damage must increase substantially so that Healers are spending MORE time doing heals and sustainting/protecting the group, so they would have less of a need for DPS skills

Reduce focus on Healers healing - This would mean raid damage would either have to decrease, or increase self sustain by everyone else, so that healers woul essentially have time to commit to a dps rotation

Um, healers focus on healing so little already that even in Savage, healers can maintain 100% DPS uptime (excluding AST). How is the swollen DPS uptime windows healers already have access to is not enough to justify more than 1 filler attack, 1 30 second DOT, and 1 40/60 second cooldown bonus button?

[Asako]

Healers don't have to dps if they don't want to. They'll just find that when it comes to endgame no one will want them in any content because for that content, they indeed do need to DPS.

Imagine you are playing a healer and you only heal and your Tank turns around and stops DPSing after he has aggro and doesn't use any cooldowns. Would you still blame the Tank? His Job is to Tank the boss/mobs not to do damage or Mitigate. Think how long a Tank like that would last in your party. Would be the quickest flick you ever give someone, so don't be suprised when as a Healer you receive the same treatment.

The people that come up with these muck statements that a healer shouldn't have to DPS are saying so because they've only done toddler content. They were also the first to cry when bosses hit too hard and so we had to nerf boss damage so now everything hits like a wet noodle.

A lot of these players aren't actually very good at playing the game and are just here for the story, but because they make up the majority of the player base and thus a lot of the income we have to adapt to them or they will leave taking their money with them. So increasing boss damage again isn't really gonna help the situation even though it would make the role more engaging. If they increase the damage and Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men rock up as your healers then you aint clearing anything.

What makes it even more annoying is in addition to reducing the damage players take, they also reduced the rotation of Healers to 2 GCDS so no wonder the better players are getting bored. I think it's time for Healers to get a proper DPS rotation and factor it into the fights, even something as basic as a Tank rotation would do and have them healer themed. If healers don't contribute DPS then it just takes longer, but those that do contribute have something meaningful to do. This way both parties get to play the game they way they want.

They are currently in an akward spot because they don't want to upset either side but as we are all aware, something needs to be done. Healers are currently in the worst position in the game role wise.

[Melichoir]

Or they could go with option 3: Put equal importance on the healing kit and the damage kit while raising healing requirements

Just boost healer damage up to tank levels so their damage output will settle to about the same as the percentages now even when they're forced to GCD heal.

I dont think that solves the fundamental gripe - Healers are just to boring to play from a dps perspective. I mean yeah, if it was purely a numbers game, then just adjusting potency would solve hte issue, but thats not the problem really. People dont like spamming Glare, for example.

So to make it more interesting on the DPS end, youd have to add complexity in the form of a rotation and DPS based GCDs/oGCDs (like tanks). This ends up requiring either heals be less important in raids, or turning heals more into oGCD based healing, which then makes healers operate more closely to how tanks behave with their mits. Not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but it is fundamentally a different style of play.

Then you got the players who just want to heal on a healing class. Yeah you could increase their damage output to be more in line with tanks by adjusting potency, but why bother doing that if those players arent concerned with damage to begin with? Especially if you increase that damage output you end up having to adjust content because you are increasing hte overall expected group dps which alters difficulty in a fight.

[ty_taurus]

Imagine you are playing a healer and you only heal and your Tank turns around and stops DPSing after he has aggro and doesn't use any cooldowns. Would you still blame the Tank? His Job is to Tank the boss/mobs not to do damage or Mitigate. Think how long a Tank like that would last in your party. Would be the quickest flick you ever give someone, so don't be suprised when as a Healer you receive the same treatment.

You can absolutely, without question, maintain aggro with no difficulty by simply keeping your tank stance up and spamming Fast Blade, Total Eclipse, or even Shield Lob. If the mentality around healers is that "healers are meant to HEAL, not be DPS. If you want to play DPS, then play a DPS job, not a healer." Then I 100% am in support of treating the tanks the same way. Reduce every tank to those 3 buttons. You don't need a DPS rotation to tank. You just need 1 basic attack and tank stance to hold aggro. Everything else can be about mitigation and personal sustain/barrier application.

Tanks are meant to TANK, not to be DPS. If you want to play DPS, then play a DPS job, not a tank.

[Supersnow845]

I dont think that solves the fundamental gripe - Healers are just to boring to play from a dps perspective. I mean yeah, if it was purely a numbers game, then just adjusting potency would solve hte issue, but thats not the problem really. People dont like spamming Glare, for example.

So to make it more interesting on the DPS end, youd have to add complexity in the form of a rotation and DPS based GCDs/oGCDs (like tanks). This ends up requiring either heals be less important in raids, or turning heals more into oGCD based healing, which then makes healers operate more closely to how tanks behave with their mits. Not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but it is fundamentally a different style of play.

Then you got the players who just want to heal on a healing class. Yeah you could increase their damage output to be more in line with tanks by adjusting potency, but why bother doing that if those players arent concerned with damage to begin with? Especially if you increase that damage output you end up having to adjust content because you are increasing hte overall expected group dps which alters difficulty in a fight.

That’s already exactly what the healers are, tanks and healers play exactly the same; GCD’s are for damage, oGCD’s are for your core role mechanic it’s just tanks get DPS level rotations and healers get one button

Nobody wants tank style rigid rotations on the healers but if you gave a healer say……..the level 50 DNC rotation with designs in place that stopping the rotation to cast succor doesn’t break the combo then you wouldn’t be changing anything about how the game is currently played; you’d just be making healer DPS more interesting

[Melichoir]

I think Im not being all that clear. Its not that I dont think healers should or shouldnt have a rotation, Im just saying that if you create one for healers, it changes the dynamic of the class and how it operates. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is a thing that is inevitable and comes with pros and cons. For example, if you added a rotation with dmg skills, like a tank has and dont change anything in their kit, it creates an issue of skill bloat and optimization issues, where your rotation performance is entirely reliant on your group not requiring healing/resses cause they do THIER things 100% correctly. No job really has that requirement for their rotation. Imagine how frustrating it would be to be in a group where you have to interrupt your dps rotation and skills to do resses and GCD healing? Or what it might be like to have healers who WONT do the healing cause theyd prefer to do their rotation and not bother ressing you cause it was your fault you died (which to be fair, probably is in many cases but that doesnt help out the group).

These are kind of issues that have to be considered when making adjustments to the playstyle of a role. It works the other way to if they focus the role more on healing aspects and how players of all different skill levels take to it. This is the rock and hard place problem Devs got with healing. Its a matter of which direction they take it, with pros and cons, and why that its not quite easy to just say "Give us a rotation" or "Just let us only heal".

[Aravell]

I think Im not being all that clear. Its not that I dont think healers should or shouldnt have a rotation, Im just saying that if you create one for healers, it changes the dynamic of the class and how it operates. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is a thing that is inevitable and comes with pros and cons. For example, if you added a rotation with dmg skills, like a tank has and dont change anything in their kit, it creates an issue of skill bloat and optimization issues, where your rotation performance is entirely reliant on your group not requiring healing/resses cause they do THIER things 100% correctly. No job really has that requirement for their rotation. Imagine how frustrating it would be to be in a group where you have to interrupt your dps rotation and skills to do resses and GCD healing? Or what it might be like to have healers who WONT do the healing cause theyd prefer to do their rotation and not bother ressing you cause it was your fault you died (which to be fair, probably is in many cases but that doesnt help out the group).

Honestly, I don't consider those "problems". If you absolutely need to interrupt your rotation to heal or raise someone......just do it? You're a healer after all. And if someone doesn't heal or raise because their rotation is too important......just kick them? They're not doing their primary duty that they signed up for at that point.

If someone's enjoyment of playing healer is purely from doing dps and healing with only OGCDs......DNC, WAR and GNB are right there. I'd rather see healers get more emphasis on actually healing and doing damage when it's safe to do so.