Why Are Healers Not Allowed A Gameplay Loop, Anyway?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

And then they cleared TOP with no healer LMAO

...with 75 clemencies and vercures each tho.

[VictorSpoils]

...with 75 clemencies and vercures each tho.

If healers can't have a damage rotation and other jobs are able to cover their healing even in ultimate, they don't serve much of a purpose.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

If healers can't have a damage rotation and other jobs are able to cover their healing even in ultimate, they don't serve much of a purpose.

You're barking up the wrong tree. All I intended to add was that "healerless TOP" had more caviats than usual - of which the greatest problem point why it is even possible lies with PLD's cover allowing for Magic Number to not drop the quasi-doom debuff on the Red Mages.

If it isn't known by any stretch, I am for making healer gameplay more engaging - offensively primarily because that is the easiest thing that can be fixed. But I am not going to go "oh yeah TOP can be done without healers" without throwing four or five asterisks behind that comment.

[SieyaM]

This is a complete non-issue. Anyone who is even remotely competent at playing a healer knows when to heal and when not to heal. If you do not main a healer, please don't presume to speak for us.

I'm sorry that I don't have a healer listed as my main job, I didn't know that meant I couldn't say anything about healers ever in any capacity. I assume you then have no opinions on tanks or DPS then?

[Palladiamors]

This is a complete non-issue. Anyone who is even remotely competent at playing a healer knows when to heal and when not to heal. If you do not main a healer, please don't presume to speak for us.

Except that as a healer you wouldn't be subject to having to deal with that, now would you? Don't presume to speak for all healers or DPS, thank you.

Back in Stormblood that was a common occurrence. The good healers knew how much damage party or raid wides dealt and played a game of it, waiting as long as possible but still not letting anyone die.

The bad healers just didn't care and focused on DPS and there were a lot of them.

[Ramiee]

Except that as a healer you wouldn't be subject to having to deal with that, now would you? Don't presume to speak for all healers or DPS, thank you.

Back in Stormblood that was a common occurrence. The good healers knew how much damage party or raid wides dealt and played a game of it, waiting as long as possible but still not letting anyone die.

The bad healers just didn't care and focused on DPS and there were a lot of them.

There are and will always be bad players. There are tanks who don't tank, there are DPS who don't dps, there are healers who don't heal.
It's an MMO you are playing with people, people are chaotic and you can't predict what they will do, the only way to make everyone play at the same skill level and responsibility of their role is by having the game play itself.

I'm sorry but I fundamentally disagree with the excuse that healer should be simple because there are bad healers, its a terrible excuse which can be used on every role. Why do people play FF14? Besides FF11 all of the other games aren't online, you'll never run into bad players just play one of those instead.

[KisaiTenshi]

I would be real hesitant to demand any kind of real DPS rotation. I can see it leading to situations where if the party takes damage and the healer has to interrupt their rotation to heal them, then they'll just not be healed. Any kind of DPS rotation given to a healer has to have no penalty for being interrupted to actually heal players.

That's exactly what happens. Because players get told they're playing poorly if they're not doing DPS, so they make sure they complete the DPS rotation. This was the exact problem "Cleric Stance" created. You had healers stop healing until the CD on using Cleric Stance dropped off. Back in content where you could expect to get undergeared parties and you could end up in parties where you are pressing all the GCD heals and that would still not be enough because the Tank was ALSO trying to tank stance.

It can not be understated enough how poorly Cleric Stance made "trying to DPS". The entire "A healer should only heal" came out of that, because it was far too easy to wipe the party by using it.

Compared to now, where now a healer isn't penalized if they choose to use the DPS functions, they also aren't penalized if they don't. The healing pressure on most content is far, far, lower than it was in release 2.0. No what gets you now is mostly latency. If you're a healer and you're playing with players on another continent, you are likely going to miss-time healing GCD's. So if someone is compelled to complete a DPS combo, they are going to try to complete it because "but muh DPS comboooo".

That's why we can't have a DPS combo, and I'd even argue the way PoM->Glare IV works encourages players to do "PoM->Glare IV->Glare IV->Glare IV" before returning to Healing actions. The solution to that is to actually remove the timer on PoM and just make the stack consumed by any action, once the stack is consumed PoM ends. Unfortunately this just makes it Aetherflow then. Why they put Glare IV behind PoM doesn't make sense, but I assume that if they made it upgrade Glare IV under some other reason, players would ALSO just lock into a DPS loop and neglect healing.

Honestly even relying on DoT's makes players believe that they aren't playing correctly if the DoT/HoT's aren't constantly up. If they wanted a better fix to making healers feel less useless, just strip all the DoT and HoT's off all base actions and only apply them as upgrades on GCD recast. Eg "if I cast Glare III, the next Glare is IV+Dot", "If I cast Cure, the next cure is automatically Cure II at the same cost.", "If I cast Cure II, the next time it will be Cure II + Regen effect" etc. So if you have time to cast sequential DPS, then you get the benefit, but you can also pick it up next cast without losing the upgrade.

[CaptainLagbeard]

One thing I would like for the developers to give a valid explanation to is why Tanks are allowed a proper DPS kit and Healers aren't, an explanation that doesn't contradict any justification they've given to why Healers are the way they are...

Needing to cause threat (enmity) is not a justification as they could just as well just bring back Flash for Enmity generation without damage.
Solo Duties aren't a justification as healers also have to do those.
Not always needing to tank isn't a justification as Healers also aren't healing 100% of the time in every fight.

[Iedarus]

Well, here's a screenshot of my latest Vali Ex clear with a purple parse. This is the ex with more incoming damage than usual, by the way.

151 Broils, babyyyyyyy!

Give us more damage buttons.

[Dogempire]

I would be real hesitant to demand any kind of real DPS rotation. I can see it leading to situations where if the party takes damage and the healer has to interrupt their rotation to heal them, then they'll just not be healed. Any kind of DPS rotation given to a healer has to have no penalty for being interrupted to actually heal players.

Not really, when I heal you know what I do? I weave an OGCD between Glare/Broil/Malefic spam.

I let regens do the heavy lifting, and I budget my cooldowns so as to not waste them by overhealing by 200%, hell, in low level content with little to no OGCD heals I'll just let natural regen tick, y'know, that slow increase in health you get when you're not full. It's only like 2% every 5 seconds or something but it's still decent enough to where you can stagger an OGCD heal so that you get more value out of using it on lower HP teammates.

The only healers who would be affected by a more complicated rotation are people who don't understand their kits, nor do they understand the concept of regens and the fact that it's okay for your teammates to not be at 100% health when there's no danger.

Healing is literally like eating while driving, first you learn how to drive, and then when you're more comfortable with driving you can tack eating onto the task. No single person is able to eat while driving from the get-go, so you master each skill individually and then you put it together, like learning most things in life.

The issue is that SE just assumes that the average healer is too stupid to multitask, even though back in the day people literally played healers BECAUSE they like to multitask.

Honestly, it's funny because if SE treated tanks and DPS the same way they treated healers, DPS would do 80% of their damage off of autoattacks and only have 2-3 skills, and Tanks would just have 50% mitigation caked into their base stats and a couple of heal buttons, but no mitigation.