Healing Focus or DPS Focus

[HappyHubris]

Yes, healer damage is still optional (save for 3 specs) and is still lower than an actual dps, but my point is they can deal damage at all now. Before Legion or so, you would barely even be able to quest as a healer, you were worthless outside the kitchen dungeons/raids.

In other words, XIV is molding their healers into a playstyle that even WoW is expanding out from.

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

And healing spec absolutely could do damage at all and quest successfully, just more slowly. I leveled my first character resto 1-60, before further improvements to healer damage output. Indeed, WoW healers have always had a stronger DPS toolkit than FFXIV ones. It's just that FFXIV isn't tuned to require healing, so the community fixates on damage output from healers instead of passing healing checks. Which makes the "one dot and single nuke spam" even more egregious.

FFXIV healers wish they had WoW's healer damage toolkits. Like my druid can literally turn into a cat and start a full DPS rotation, where my FFXIV healers just spam the 1 key.

[Allegor]

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

And healing spec absolutely could do damage at all and quest successfully, just more slowly. I leveled my first character resto 1-60, before further improvements to healer damage output. Indeed, WoW healers have always had a stronger DPS toolkit than FFXIV ones. It's just that FFXIV isn't tuned to require healing, so the community fixates on damage output from healers instead of passing healing checks. Which makes the "one dot and single nuke spam" even more egregious.

FFXIV healers wish they had WoW's healer damage toolkits. Like my druid can literally turn into a cat and start a full DPS rotation, where my FFXIV healers just spam the 1 key.

I ommited it because I didn't think it relevant at the time. It was because of the Legion artifacts, I'm assuming, when they balanced it so you wouldn't "need" to switch to dps to actually do stuff anymore. I remember loving leveling as holy then, whereas in previous expansions I'd feel forced to play as shadow.

The closest thing XIV has is SCH and SMN - why would you ever want to be a SCH outside a dungeon if you level it for free by leveling SMN, right? except....there are lots of people who don't like SMN, or even have it unlocked, and would rather play SCH at all times. Are their preferences not as valid? and that's not even mentioning that WHM, AST and SGE don't have a dps counterpart to fall onto for 'free leveling.'

That said, I do agree XIV healers dps kit is embarrassing next to WoW's. I think the most simple healer is resto shaman, and even they have a "Fire III" proc to break monotony (not to mention talents to lean deeper into an offensive playstyle) but since both games have fundamentally different encounter designs, it's not like they even have much downtime to say their gameplay is monotonous in the first place
/shrug

[HappyHubris]

I ommited it because I didn't think it relevant at the time. It was because of the Legion artifacts, I'm assuming, when they balanced it so you wouldn't "need" to switch to dps to actually do stuff anymore. I remember loving leveling as holy then, whereas in previous expansions I'd feel forced to play as shadow.

The closest thing XIV has is SCH and SMN - why would you ever want to be a SCH outside a dungeon if you level it for free by leveling SMN, right? except....there are lots of people who don't like SMN, or even have it unlocked, and would rather play SCH at all times. Are their preferences not as valid? and that's not even mentioning that WHM, AST and SGE don't have a dps counterpart to fall onto for 'free leveling.'

That said, I do agree XIV healers dps kit is embarrassing next to WoW's. I think the most simple healer is resto shaman, and even they have a "Fire III" proc to break monotony (not to mention talents to lean deeper into an offensive playstyle) but since both games have fundamentally different encounter designs, it's not like they even have much downtime to say their gameplay is monotonous in the first place
/shrug

"I'd feel forced to play as shadow." But not because WoW's healer toolkit is inferior to FFXIV's. It's because you had easy access to an alternate spec while leveling healing. FFXIV just takes away the alternatives so people level with 1 nuke and 1 DoT.

[Allegor]

"I'd feel forced to play as shadow." But not because WoW's healer toolkit is inferior to FFXIV's. It's because you had easy access to an alternate spec while leveling healing. FFXIV just takes away the alternatives so people level with 1 nuke and 1 DoT.

I'm...not sure what your point is tbh. I felt 'forced' to play shadow because I don't like shadow, I wanted to play as holy, which is a choice I was granted eventually and was happy about. That's like...my whole point? that I find it funny how WoW acknowledged people like healers to be more than healbots in dungeons and were given more freedom of choice, whereas XIV takes away that choice for the sake of simplicity.

[Truen]

You're omitting that WoW has had dual specs since Wrath, so no one is questing in healing spec.

I play WoW to this day, and it's balance b/t healing and dps is actually fantastic. FF14 isn't even close to this.