Would tanks be okay if SE swapped the damage between tank and healers?

[CaptainLagbeard]

Asking for any role to do less DPS will never be something people would embrace willingly. Also, would that not go against what Healers want, healing? I often read that Healers don't want to DPS, its why they play healer. Then why advocate for making Healer DPS even more mandatory than it already is?

Instead of forcing a higher/different DPS discrepancy, it would be better if the game actually brings in unique Healer mechanics that cannot be resolved by other roles. Make overhealing do something (like fill a boss debuff bar, that bursts into a short stun, idk) or bring in burst heal checks that require dedicated healer healspells.

And no, I have no idea what else those mechanics could be. I am not a Game Designer, after all. That would be something to figure out for Square Enix.

Healers doing DPS was kind of part of the role even all the way back in ARR. It's been part of the game's core design.
But it used to be a reward for playing well as you could replace unneeded heals with attacks... But they've slowly moved away from that and have been making DPS the primary job of Healers, without giving them DPS... Outside of raidwides and tankbusters, you only need to heal if someone stands in a completely avoidable AoE.

[Shurrikhan]

Asking for any role to do less DPS will never be something people would embrace willingly.

I would, if its excess currently breaks the relative value of other roles and/or makes the game inadvertently easier than intended.

Then why advocate for making Healer DPS even more mandatory than it already is?

100% of GCDs spent towards contributing damage is already 100% of GCDs spent towards contributing damage. You literally can't go more dps-focused than is already the case among modern healers. It has also been a part and parcel of the healer role since 1.0. As it is in virtually every MMO that doesn't treat large swaths of idle time for fear of MP starvation as a fun and desirable mechanic.

If we want any less than 100% offensive uptime on healers, the relative incoming damage has to go up, which acts as a relative nerf to tanks, healer, and dps self-sustain.

And if we nerf all by increasing outgoing damage, unless that outgoing damage is primarily AoE, then the rDPS advantage of dropping healers just becomes all the more prominent... unless you increase healer damage to make up for the lost GCDs.

There was a way of mitigating these costs to simultaneous output to reduce the relative value of eking out every last offensive GCD possible that XIV launched with, oddly enough. At that time, 25% offensive uptime could still net healers some 40% of their damage and 90% damage could be achieved even with just some 75% of uptime. It functioned primarily off of, simple though it was... multiple DoTs. You know, from when we had several times more healing to do and yet also had at least as many rotational attacks.

Instead of forcing a higher/different DPS discrepancy, it would be better if the game actually brings in unique Healer mechanics that cannot be resolved by other roles.

Why would that necessarily be better, though? Would the game be better for only healers being able to resurrect others? Would the game be better if no non-tank could be shielded/DRed through a minor tether or charge mechanic?

I'm not saying it can't be, but... why is death by composition check necessarily better than there being multiple means to achieve a given end (be it eHP, damage, or whatever else)?

Perhaps I just need some other but still vivid examples from which to imagine what you want to go for here, since most important "healer-specific" mechanics are relegated to, say, an Esuna-able Doom, which is far from engaging, imo. The first hasn't made much sense to me, and the second seems simply a matter of degree rather than type.

[Supersnow845]

Asking for any role to do less DPS will never be something people would embrace willingly. Also, would that not go against what Healers want, healing? I often read that Healers don't want to DPS, its why they play healer. Then why advocate for making Healer DPS even more mandatory than it already is?

Instead of forcing a higher/different DPS discrepancy, it would be better if the game actually brings in unique Healer mechanics that cannot be resolved by other roles. Make overhealing do something (like fill a boss debuff bar, that bursts into a short stun, idk) or bring in burst heal checks that require dedicated healer healspells.

And no, I have no idea what else those mechanics could be. I am not a Game Designer, after all. That would be something to figure out for Square Enix.

We are at this point because square won’t implement these things, how long do you think healers have been begging for a semblance of gameplay

We have no damage rotation, we do the least damage WHILE also being the most punished for others mistakes (remember we when a flawless party could allow a healer to eek our more damage than the tanks. Now the tanks who couldn’t care less about anyone do more damage by built in potency), our healing is done by the other roles and our complaints are constantly ignored

If you think having your damage nerfed because tanks have no need to care about the party with respect with their DPS how do you think healers feel, we’ve been nerfed every single expansion since SB. We are players as well, when do our concerns get precedence over the people who want tanks to do the healers role for them

Something has to give somewhere and healers have nothing left to give. Does anyone consider the fact that healers never agreed to be nerfed relative to tanks in EW and DT

[Carighan]

Asking for any role to do less DPS will never be something people would embrace willingly. Also, would that not go against what Healers want, healing? I often read that Healers don't want to DPS, its why they play healer. Then why advocate for making Healer DPS even more mandatory than it already is?

Yes, a far better solution would be, as I said in the previous post, to ensure that just like tanking and damage dealing, the encounter design (both in dungeons and in raids) ensures that the role of healing is required.

Because make no mistake: The raw potential healing output of healers is extremely high. If we actually spend GCDs on healing 100%, the output is a bit crazy. Far far far in excess of what tanks+DPS can provide. By an entire order of magnitude.

But this also hints at the problem: Fights deal an entire order of magnitude too little damage to both the group and the tank. This is why the healing healers could provide is so unnecessary, because no damage exists to use that healing on. I don't see SQEX changing their design approach sadly, but it would be the "correct" solution to just require more healing. Not something like "50% more raid damage" or even "double the damage to the tank". No, we're talking "every auto-attack also hit 2 random non-tank raid members for 30%-50% of their HP", "all raid fights now have a consistent 5% HP per 3s bleed on the entire raid", "apply a DoT to the tank that has to be Esuna'd every 9s seconds that lasts 60s and stacks", etc etc. Which would probably just annoy a lot of current players because of how disruptive a change it'd be. It would work, however. And be the "proper" solution to the dilemma.

Sadly, OP is also correct in stating that just swapping the damage output of tanks and healers - which btw makes no sense, both aren't DPS, so why isn't their damage roughly the same? - would be a workable bandaid solution. And knowing SQEX's approach to job design, it's rather likely that if they take this problem serious for 8.0, they'd do something like this.

[ovIm]

Healers doing DPS was kind of part of the role even all the way back in ARR. It's been part of the game's core design.

Yes, I know, I have been playing this game since 2.0, and my heart weeps every time I see how healer toolkits are gutted. Back then, it was much more fulfilling.

Why would that necessarily be better, though?
...

Perhaps I just need some other but still vivid examples from which to imagine what you want to go for here, since most important "healer-specific" mechanics are relegated to, say, an Esuna-able Doom, which is far from engaging, imo. The first hasn't made much sense to me, and the second seems simply a matter of degree rather than type.

Better is always subjective, and in terms of healer engagement, there are many voices asking for many things. Supersnow84 has been asking for other ways one could implement other than to change how much DPS contribution each role does, and I have provided examples. Again, I am not a game designer however. This is a task that should be done by Square Enix. They make this game, they should have the expertise and the personnel to tackle this.

We are at this point because square won’t implement these things, how long do you think healers have been begging for a semblance of gameplay

Mate, I know. I have been following the healer threads, I am an advocate for the Healer strike, even if I mainly play tank/dps. I want every healer to have fun playing their class, to enjoy doing content and pressing their buttons. It sucks that so many of you are being kicked in the shins by Square Enix again and again.
You asked for examples of what one could do differently earlier, I have provided. The fact that Square Enix does not listen to this very valid feedback is not my fault, though. Personally, I think Square would do well to listen to actual healer players on the forum.

Regardless, I still believe that turning the DPS contribution on its head is not a solution, and would most likely be damaging in the long run.

--
ETA: Part of what made me become a tank back in 2.x was because I noticed how I was more than a meat shield - how my performance positively contributed to clearing a fight in a noticeable way. The trinity was much more soft back then, and has mostly been changed to the detriment of Healers. Rather than taking that feeling away, Square Enix should work to instill the same feeling for healers.

[Supersnow845]

Playing devils advocate here as this was originally my suggestion that was never designed to be taken ultra seriously

Question 1) why would it be such a detriment for tank and healer DPS to be flipped? Not saying I actually support this as a valid idea because like I said it was originally my brainfart but I have also not actually seen any actual refutation of it besides “just because healers are bad doesn’t mean you should make tanks bad as well” even though the root cause of healers being bad isn’t that they do less damage

Question 2) why is the question always “we need to think of other things to give the healers to make them feel like the tanks do.” And never “why are the tanks doing what the healers are supposed to do, why can’t we give healers back the healing and give tanks something interesting that isn’t the healers job?”


This circles back to an old point that I tend to bring up in most rank and healer forums, people seem adamant they don’t want tanks nerfed to to fix healers but nobody can ever provide a way to actually fix healers without nerfing the tanks that doesn’t amount to “make the healers do something completely different that isn’t healing so the tanks can continue to heal”

[ovIm]

Playing devils advocate here as this was originally my suggestion that was never designed to be taken ultra seriously
...

Now we are getting somewhere else.

To Question 1: See my ETA in post above, which should give a good answer I think.

To Question 2: I do agree that the amount of Healing tanks can do is obscene compared to the amount of incoming damage. I would really be in favor of tanks ability to heal others to be greatly reduced. Additionally, I have plain out said that I want the Healing healers do to matter, like making Overheal a mechanic or changing how heals have to be cast in a way that does not allow other roles to step on the healers turf. No more "tanks can replace a healer".

[Alice_Rivers]

With the way things exist now, in dungeons at least, punishing overheal with some kind of stun/damage/other thing is only going to punish the healers who actually try to do their job. I do understand why tanks, WAR in particular, don't want to lose their ability to do the healer's job, after all, when an MMO dev makes you effectively the protagonist of a single player game why would you ever give that up?

[Erit]

How can you argue to stop continuing to push scaling too far in scope when we are in this mess entirely because tanks scaling in literally every conceivable sense has been so dramatically scaled that it’s actually pushing out another role

Tanks aren’t “successful” as you put it, they are literally just being given the healer roles responsibilities with no strings attached, that sort of balancing doesn’t help anyone

I too can present incoherent arguments resulting from a deliberate disuse of reading comprehension, but I'll spare you the example.

The problem of tanks having enough in-house healing to obviate the role of healer is not solved by turning tanks into healers and healers into DPS with party support. That is so bewilderingly ass-backwards it makes me wonder if you're only defending the notion as a gimmick.

The solution, one that I'd be in favor of if we assume a frictionless spherical cow, as it were, is for the tank jobs to not have as much in-house healing. In fact, I for one would approve of a return to the older style where the big challenge of tanking was managing aggro, and then every expansion would give more tools for that rather than a continual escalation of our damage rotation. But it's unlikely I'll live to see that world, because for that to work and be financially successful CBU3 would have to abandon the increasingly tattered pretense that they don't want there to be a "correct" way to play a given job and actually have content sit people down and say plainly "cook or get out of the kitchen." Which they're already kind of doing with the newer jobs, but that internal contradiction still makes me laugh when I think on it.

The reason tanks have so much healing and support kit is because it turns out a lot of "healer mains" are dullards who can't even press Cure II correctly while a lot of tanks are tryhards. If everyone who wanted to heal was forced to demonstrate they are not in fact a dullard—a threshold that is better determined by people smarter than I—before being allowed to inflict themselves on the duty finder, such that tanks no longer could set their watches by how often they've had to save a run with their own healing kit, chances are good we'd be in a much more interesting timeline. Do the same for every role while you're at it, hell every job if budget allows. It doesn't have to turn everybody into a tryhard, but everyone should have at least been made to go through the motions at least once and grasp the theory on how to do things properly.

This is a dichotomy failure birthed from the death of trust. DPS only fixes the issue if you deal so much damage that the enemy dies immediately after their first auto-attack, if not before. That is not going to happen, so something else needs to be done to solve this.

[Shurrikhan]

I too can present incoherent arguments resulting from a deliberate disuse of reading comprehension, but I'll spare you the example.

The problem of tanks having enough in-house healing to obviate the role of healer is not solved by turning tanks into healers and healers into DPS with party support. That is so bewilderingly ass-backwards it makes me wonder if you're only defending the notion as a gimmick.

Didn't you just say you'd spare the thread intentional disuse of reading comprehension?

No one suggested turning tanks into healers. The person you have quoted merely pointed out how they ALREADY frequently replace healers (because it's an rDPS gain at little to no added risk).

No, giving the role whose damage is actually hurt by doing their role a duly higher damage ceiling so that parties aren't so rewarded for replacing them would not make healers more interesting, but the OP didn't ask anything about that. It was instead, though more nicely worded, whether most tanks' egos would be too fragile to put the game's broader health ahead of feeding their own main character syndrome.

...I suspect we have the answer now.