I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[Sebazy]

healers are there to heal if you want complex dps rotations roll a dps.

Just like buttons are there to be pressed more than once every 10 seconds sir

[TheDustyOne]

As tiring as it is, it's still best to dismantle the "roll a DPS" argument than to dismiss it. Not for the sake of the person making that argument, they've already made up their mind, but for the off-chance of someone else reading through and needs convincing that we need to be more than healbots. Even with the 100 pages of debate that would convince most reasonable people, someone new jumping into the discussion shouldn't have to read through all of that when it's easy enough to repeat the counterpoint anyway.

If tanks can get a healthy mix of damage buttons and mitigation buttons, then healers can also have a healthy mix of damage buttons and healing buttons. If DPS can get the occasional mitigation or healing utility outside of their role, then tanks and healers should also be able to do things outside of their usual role.

This goes back to a larger point that Square really needs to learn at some point; we're not simply playing a role, we're playing jobs. WHM should feel like a master of the natural elements, wielder of holy magic, capable of sanctifying their teammates and smiting with righteous judgement. Instead we stare menacingly at the opponent for 30s straight and pop a flower every now and then. AST should feel like a manipulator of time and fate, capable of bringing good fortune and reversing/accelerating pain. It has some of that fantasy within the healing kit, but not in the barebones Malefic spam, and the duplicate effects of the cards don't make me feel like I'm doing anything with fate whatsoever.

Relegating healers to only healing is also counter to how the game has been designed for the past 11 years. It would be a massive time-sink to redesign all that content to make us spend most of our time healing, and would massively increase the skill floor, effectively only keeping veteran healers around. Whether we like it or not, content has to have some leeway on the amount of damage it can throw at us (even if I agree that it should be less lenient than it is now) purely to let less skilled healers catch up with healing demands, as well as to let the team overall make a few mistakes without causing wipes. The moment you have that leeway, you also make room for damage, and that should also be more engaging for healers than a nuke and dot.

[IDontPetLalas]

Bah, just when I'm in a fairly good state of being disgruntled someone has to make a perfectly well thought out and civilized post.

[Aravell]

Relegating healers to only healing is also counter to how the game has been designed for the past 11 years. It would be a massive time-sink to redesign all that content to make us spend most of our time healing, and would massively increase the skill floor, effectively only keeping veteran healers around. Whether we like it or not, content has to have some leeway on the amount of damage it can throw at us (even if I agree that it should be less lenient than it is now) purely to let less skilled healers catch up with healing demands, as well as to let the team overall make a few mistakes without causing wipes. The moment you have that leeway, you also make room for damage, and that should also be more engaging for healers than a nuke and dot.

Honestly, making healers heal all the time in order to clear content doesn't only just filter out new players by massively increasing the skill floor, it would also eventually cause veterans who can handle the healing to quit, because I'm pretty sure no one wants to main a role where any one mistake you make will immediately wipe the party. We can look at The Feast for a prime example of that, the healer role was seriously underpopulated because one singular mistake you make could lose you the match, not many people would want or care for that kind of pressure all the time.

[ty_taurus]

The thing about old MMO healers that existed to only heal and nothing else was that they just weren't popular. Very few people like the idea of existing to be an extension of everyone else's HP bar, which is why moving into the mid 2010s, healers across online games started changing to be far more dynamic. You aren't just there to fill HP bars, you also have attacks, utility, a little bit of everything essentially, but not enough time to do all of it at once.

That's why I praise early FFXIV healing, because it had that balance. You weren't just a healbot. You could be aggressive, but there was a greater balance between your need to heal and the opportunity to attack. Mitigation was largely your responsibility, and when the team made mistakes, you had the ability to save the run far more often. There wasn't a body check every 5 seconds, and you could more often survive a mechanic that wasn't done perfectly as the designer intended. MP actually existed.

I hate what the healer role has become, but I'd probably hate it even more if all you did was heal and nothing else. I want to participate in the battle with my team by juggling healing, damage, and utility. I don't want to be the team's heal caddie.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

As tiring as it is, it's still best to dismantle the "roll a DPS" argument than to dismiss it. Not for the sake of the person making that argument, they've already made up their mind, but for the off-chance of someone else reading through and needs convincing that we need to be more than healbots. Even with the 100 pages of debate that would convince most reasonable people, someone new jumping into the discussion shouldn't have to read through all of that when it's easy enough to repeat the counterpoint anyway[...]

At some point we might just wanna compile a list of posts that we can link to debunk these common 'counterpoints'.

Recycled arguments deserves recycled responses.

[Saraide]

One of my favorite MMOs was one where healers only healed, they would have to sacrifice too much healing power to stack accuracy or unlock DPS abilities. It would probably be considered trash by today’s standards.

But even this MMO gave healers something to do when there wasn’t much to heal. In mid game, you unlocked an ability that made the next GCD done to your target do double the damage. You would juggle between healing spells and this DPS buff as a healer. Even later, there were gear unlocks that increased your defense significantly, and you would start focusing on your AoE damage (very similar to Aero 3 and Holy, including the stun).

Anyway, that was an old school MMO. I don’t know of any modern MMO that has healers not DPSing. If you want healers to heal more, then you should also have a lot to complain about the current state of FFXIV. IMO, even with the 2 button rotation, healers are more hyper focused on DPS now than they were in the past.

Even in p10s the top healing logs featured a vast majority of GCDs spent on damage spells. People with grey damage and orange healing parses spend the majority of their GCDs casting the damage spell.

[Aravell]

If you want healers to heal more, then you should also have a lot to complain about the current state of FFXIV. IMO, even with the 2 button rotation, healers are more hyper focused on DPS now than they were in the past.

Funnily enough, if the people who only want to heal on their healers dug a little deeper with their research, they'd be asking for HW design back instead of wanting to triple down on the ShB design. There was very little pressure to do a lot of dps back in HW because of how difficult it was to manage your MP and also Cleric Stance existing along with more tank damage, I remember that most players actually encouraged the healer to not do any damage until they're able to properly gauge the amount of incoming damage because it was so easy to wipe from unlucky crit autos/busters.

Also, the more damage buttons healers have, the less damage they'd lose to having to GCD heal instead of pressing their filler nuke, this is a point that was brought up by quite a few people. Returning to the old design would actually open up space to encourage using GCDs for anything other than damage because you end up losing much less damage than now. It would also reduce toxicity towards healers rather than increasing it, you actually had a valid reason to stand around and do nothing for stretches of time back in HW because the tank could take 2 unlucky crits and just drop low, you don't exactly have any valid reason to stand around doing nothing in current design because of how accessible it is to deal damage and heal at the same time.

[ForsakenRoe]

Find it wild that we have the simultaneous stances of 'WOW Cata healing (where you were forced to heal almost constantly because of how high the HPS demanded was) almost killed the playerbase and nobody wanted to heal because it was so punishing', and also 'we need to heal more, so that we spend more of our time healing than dealing damage, if you want to damage then play DPS etc etc'

We really do need an FAQ post to link to anytime someone comes in with a previously debunked stance like 'play DPS if you want to DPS' or 'adding more damage buttons will make healers imbalanced because X reason'

[Saraide]

I have said this in a few posts, I don’t think SE can make a fight that makes two healers heal constantly for a variety of reasons. Although, some fights feel like they’re not even trying to make us heal at all.

I agree, pushing the needle to 50% of GCDs spent on healing is not realistic. This is why I am in favor of introducing a more complex dps rotation. I feel like I shouldnt have to say this but I will anyway: This doesnt mean I want whm's dps rotation to be as complex as blm's (nobody is asking for this). As a wild guess 'slightly less complex than tanks' would be a good target for SE to hit.