#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Absurdity]

My argument is that non-DPS roles should be comparable to non-DPS roles. Hence, Tanks and Healers. Neither is a DPS.

And whether the "support roles" should do equally as much DPS is worth discussing. It just doesn't fix the underlying issues with healer gameplay, namely that it consists of spamming the same button for 50% or more of a fight. Increasing the damage of that single spell wouldn't change this.

Though doing some basic testing, I did find some things... Running Deltascape 3 (O3), with different job to see how quickly they beat them as it's a relatively simple fight with little downtime making it a good training dummy... And eliminating the effects of gear mostly, I picked up the DT artifact sets and used Resilient accessories and a Vanguard ring on all the Jobs to get everything to roughly the same point.

WHM with the recent addition of starting with full lilies, including a Blood Lily for Afflatus Misery, are basically just slightly behind PLD, probably the lowest damaging tank, in damage output on the short term. It's likely going to fall off as you get relegated to mostly just spamming Glare while PLD gets to do their full rotation constantly. To stay the same, Glare Spam and the 3 Glare 4's would need to outdamage the entire Confetior combo by a decent margin since it's a 2m CD vs a 1m CD.

Also trying SCH, it has as huge of a gap to Tanks and Tanks do to DPS.

Whitemage's damage profile is what we consider "selfish" meaning that it's only contribution to the "expected damage" is what it's attack spells provide. Tanks fall into the same category, they may have damage buffs but those only apply to the tank itself.

There wil always be huge gaps between SCH and AST compared to tanks in a solo scenario, there is even a sizeable gap between those two and WHM/SGE. Scholar and Astro have lower personal damage because they provide damage boosts to the party. But when there is no party to provide those boosts to (or even less than 7 other people) they quickly fall behind because their main source of indirectly contributing to damage is negated.

The DPS itself might not matter, but the total value should definitely matter.


If you have one role that is able to provide all the direct raid sustain needs of a given fight and yet also provides immensely greater total indirect raid sustain (via mitigating single-target attacks through itself) and significantly more damage all atop that... that's not great.

That's a slightly different discussion though, the overall value that a role provides to the party.

And I agree that tanks should not have decent damage output, party mitigation and high party sustain on top of that. Because now they're starting to infringe on what the healer role is supposed to uniquely bring to the table. Just like Heavensward tanks were infringing on the damage dealer's role.
At most the tanks should be able to sustain themselves for a time, not the entire party if damage frequency is as low as it is in dungeons for example and certainly not indefinitely.

If healer dpsing is going to be stay as simple as it is right now there's really no reason for them to hit as hard as a tank though, ShB had this problem and tank dps rotations really felt like a lot of effort for very little damage because of that.

That's one of very few arguments I could think of for not making the two roles do equal DPS, and it's not even a very strong one. Like I said before, as hard as it may be to mess up your rotation on a tank nowadays it is at least still possible. You could drop Storm's Eye, you could waste MP on a TBN that doesn't break, you could drop your combo and miss a cartridge.
Healers don't have a rotation, they spend at least 50% of all their attacks spamming the same button, it's incredibly hard to mess up because you can slot those in at any time, no combo or resource buildup required. It is streamlined to a point that it has become insufferable to actually play.

The other would be that now that healers provide more DPS their expected contribution also increases. This is only going to widen the gap between people who can spam Glare 180 times per fight and those who can't, because every Glare you don't cast is an even bigger damage loss than right now.

[Shurrikhan]

If healer dpsing is going to be stay as simple as it is right now there's really no reason for them to hit as hard as a tank though, ShB had this problem and tank dps rotations really felt like a lot of effort for very little damage because of that.

I rather doubt the rotational difficulty has much to do with how poor healer damage is compared to tanks.

I suspect it has more to do with the fact that healer performance being X% of tanks used to have to account for GCDs lost to healing while tanks getting their optimal damage, in turn, used to require greeding and therefore drawing extra GCD heals from their healer such that they were roughly balanced in tandem but the devs' decision to maintain nearly maximum tank damage even while also maintaining their maximum passive sustainability (in attempting to pander simultaneously to panicky turtle tanks and the average / less inept player while removing tank stances as an actual gameplay mechanic instead of a once per job-swap chore) completely forgot about that for tanks (overpowering them) even while (or, and therefore) nerfing healer damage per average offensive GCD relative to tanks in compensation for said healers' increased offensive uptime.

That's a slightly different discussion though, the overall value that a role provides to the party.

And I agree that tanks should not have decent damage output, party mitigation and high party sustain on top of that. Because now they're starting to infringe on what the healer role is supposed to uniquely bring to the table. Just like Heavensward tanks were infringing on the damage dealer's role.

Different, yes, but largely interrelated -- not even really separable without risking uselessness. Damage-Dealers have only damage, yes, but the longer they can go without heals, the less healers' value is outside of their own damage (and therefore... at all, since it's less than a damage-dealers' and all fights are ended via damage), for instance. Any potential at-cost sustain choices from tanks are, meanwhile, only as valuable as the difference in rDPS through freed healer GCDs can be. Not only compositional flexibility (or, whether someone gets shafted as quickly as possible with no redeeming broader flexibility) but also kit depth/optionality depend on inter-role balance across all means of ultimately generating practical value, no matter how indirect.

[Absurdity]

I rather doubt the rotational difficulty has much to do with how poor healer damage is compared to tanks.

I suspect it has more to do with the fact that healer performance being X% of tanks used to have to account for GCDs lost to healing while tanks getting their optimal damage, in turn, used to require greeding and therefore drawing extra GCD heals from their healer such that they were roughly balanced in tandem but the devs' decision to maintain nearly maximum tank damage even while also maintaining their maximum passive sustainability (in attempting to pander simultaneously to panicky turtle tanks and the average / less inept player while removing tank stances as an actual gameplay mechanic instead of a once per job-swap chore) completely forgot about that for tanks (overpowering them) even while (or, and therefore) nerfing healer damage per average offensive GCD relative to tanks in compensation for said healers' increased offensive uptime.

I would assume the intention even back then was to keep healer DPS lower than tanks, otherwise they could have buffed healer potencies to account for lost damage casts due to GCD healing.

Technically you still need to greed GCDs on a tank to reach your maximum potential output and run the risk of eating a damage down, crippling yourself. But that is also not required to do more DPS than a healer.

[Shurrikhan]

I would assume the intention even back then was to keep healer DPS lower than tanks, otherwise they could have buffed healer potencies to account for lost damage casts due to GCD healing.

Right, but consider: If you had healers at, say, 85% of tank damage (though early SCH could actually beat tanks, so...) even when they were losing a significant number of GCDs to healing, apportioning for the time lost would put them equal or ahead of tanks' damage back then if they had similarly full offensive uptime. Which... makes sense, since the tank is ALWAYS contributing sustain as long as the target is hitting him instead of someone squishier, while the healer does so only when actually healing.

So, one role was allowed to have both max damage and its max sustain in one go while the other was nerfed commensurately to having its "free" sustain increased relative to healing requirements, even though tanks lost about as much rotational complexity across Stormblood->Shadowbringers as healers loss, at least in flat (rather than proportional) terms.

Technically you still need to greed GCDs on a tank to reach your maximum potential output and run the risk of eating a damage down, crippling yourself. But that is also not required to do more DPS than a healer.

Not really any more so than a healer's even 1.5s cast would cause it to have to "greed" for full uptime amid outgoing AoEs, given how far encounters have gone over the last few expansions to guarantee per-GCD melee access.

[Calysto]

The developers don't think it's a problem. The developers also seem to think that non-DPS roles shouldn't do damage. So what would be the problem if they removed tank's combos and ogcd attacks? And people responding to me also don't think non-DPS damage isn't something that should be considered.

Because Tanks get a preferential treatment ? poster boys for most expansions, achievements/mounts, priority for adventurer in need, op in any content with reward based on enemity, etc...
Healers should be happy to get scraps, and you know what ? adding potency to their filler is exactly that ! Why make the role fun to play when you can just drop 100p to their filler. There healers fixed, ! are you happy ?
Like most people pointed out, that change absolutly nothing to your first problem (dps checks). instead of it being (exagerated) 40dps+30tank+20healer=90dps check you get 40dps+30tank+30healer=100dps check. with a bad healer dps, that's a 10% more expected from the party to clear.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to increasing Healer DPS to at least reduce the gap, because solo duties are boring, but other than that, it solves absolutly nothing.

If healer dpsing is going to be stay as simple as it is right now there's really no reason for them to hit as hard as a tank though, ShB had this problem and tank dps rotations really felt like a lot of effort for very little damage because of that.

I'd argue than If you expect someone to take a role as boring as healer to fill the slot, they'd deserve to feel some gratification.

[Moqi]

Potency talks aside, this game is 90% non savage/hard content... I'd like to have fun pressing buttons in the vast majority of the game as well, which spamming one button isn't.

[AlliciaCapulet]

I probably did it in the past but I also want to add my voice to this thread. Scholar main since the opening of Jenova server here. In my heart I still a main sch even If I play it less and less because it's now boring.

The problems that are told on OP are still all valid at this day.

I still miss my Stormblood's scholar that was my favorite, or my HW/ARR ones before that was way more fun than the current one.

I understand that they tried to give mitigation and healing skills to other job so they could survive easily if a bad healer is in the party, but that kind of killed the purpose of having a healer. It's part of an online game to often be stuck with bad players, and the XIV community always had the reputation of being patient and friendly to help people to understand their mistakes. Nowadays, with the easy casual content, especially nerfed old content, I can understand why there are so many bad (every roles tbf) in the games. If for the leveling to level 100, all you offer is non challenging dungeons/trials/raids with not threats and where the tanks/dps can survive without healer, don't be surprise if they are bad when those players starts to play in extreme, savage or any other of the harder content.

The priority for 8.0 should be to adress the jobs issues so healer become something necessary again and not optional (and make them fun to play, they deserve a nice dps rotation like they used to have). But, SE should also consider putting back danger and possibility of dying in dungeon. I did the dungeon where Nidhogg is the final boss the other day, and I was surprise to see that Estinien is not even there anymore. Back in the time, the healer had to keep him alive or it was a wipe. Oh, and that dungeon used to take 30 minutes to do, had challenge and was actually fun. The current version took 12 minutes to clear and was braindead, borring. To be short, a 12 minutes dungeon that felt longer to do because it was just boring, than the old 30 minutes versions where we had danger and needs to heal.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Because Tanks get a preferential treatment ? poster boys for most expansions, achievements/mounts, priority for adventurer in need, op in any content with reward based on enemity, etc...
Healers should be happy to get scraps, and you know what ? adding potency to their filler is exactly that ! Why make the role fun to play when you can just drop 100p to their filler. There healers fixed, ! are you happy ?
Like most people pointed out, that change absolutly nothing to your first problem (dps checks). instead of it being (exagerated) 40dps+30tank+20healer=90dps check you get 40dps+30tank+30healer=100dps check. with a bad healer dps, that's a 10% more expected from the party to clear.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to increasing Healer DPS to at least reduce the gap, because solo duties are boring, but other than that, it solves absolutly nothing.

I would argue that giving healers more damage would fix the issue of healers not doing enough damage for DPS checks because they lack the tools to do said damage.

But thinking more on the testing I did, the only reason WHM was able to almost compete with PLD on a single 2m window was purely because of Afflatus Misery, if they wanted to keep more or less the same gameplay healers currently do to "not stress them out", they could replace Afflatus Misery with a new Healer Role spell that's an instant cast GCD with a 2m CD that hits for 1500 potency. Then it would be an issue of Healers playing bad if they didn't contribute enough damage and not because their kits are undertuned.

[Absurdity]

I would argue that giving healers more damage would fix the issue of healers not doing enough damage for DPS checks because they lack the tools to do said damage.

But thinking more on the testing I did, the only reason WHM was able to almost compete with PLD on a single 2m window was purely because of Afflatus Misery, if they wanted to keep more or less the same gameplay healers currently do to "not stress them out", they could replace Afflatus Misery with a new Healer Role spell that's an instant cast GCD with a 2m CD that hits for 1500 potency. Then it would be an issue of Healers playing bad if they didn't contribute enough damage and not because their kits are undertuned.

That's what we've been trying to explain. People aren't failing DPS checks because healer damage is undertuned, the DPS check is tuned around that current healer damage. So if you're dying on enrage due to missing healer damage then that healer is simply bad.

[Daudream]

I love how almost every time this thread is brought back up, a couple pages worth of discussion on the topic pops up alongside it, too bad the discussion shows no improvement or acknowledgment on the issue, as it loops back to the same talking points (regardless on if it's for or against the strike).

More likely than not I'll never get to enjoy healer ever again but at least reading in here remains entertaining.