Healer DPS metagame for non savage content is getting old

[Ilan]

You know what would be great ? SE implement some tools that MEASURE how a DPS use his DPS rotations. He would have a color on his TP bar. Blue = awesome / green = somewhat decent / purple = go back on the dummy.

Another thing i wish would be SE giving just 1 elite endgame content with ALL members to be gear capped. 100% skills and 0% stats. You acheive in there, it REALLY means you know your job. Imagine entering such instance, all members have same level of wep, same level of everything.

now why people would want to go in there : ok after completion of the last fight of the serie.. you could gain best wep in game. That, right there, and only for that reason alone, people would want to go there.

100% skills / 0% gear

I'll make a new post about that lol

Its called RAID, and i don't mean crap like wiping city. Because in there almost the whole Party has the same ilvl +-5.

I don't even understand why some people get annoyed because healers meld acc in their gear, the game allowes it and its nice to have a dpsing SCH in savage. If you don't like the way SE handles things, then go and play it your way or stop playing it at all. Stop trying to force SE to adjust the whole game to you, adjust to the game...

[randysquirrel]

I have to agree with OP. It used to be, you learned a fight, knowing when you had a window to use cleric, throw out a bit of dps, then back to heal. Now you learn fights to know when to drop cleric, throw out one essential dignity, then back into cleric

I'll meld because it's the only thing feasibly worth melding. I don't need my heals to hit harder, pre-casting means SS doesn't bring much, and MP is not difficult to manage. There is so much time to dps, I may as well make sure my casts actually hit

To those saying they refuse to dps as heals. I understand you don't feel you should have to, but given there is no need to spam heal, I genuinely don't know what you're doing half the run, just standing there doing nothing or healing people who don't need healing

[Sareal]

To those saying they refuse to dps as heals. I understand you don't feel you should have to, but given there is no need to spam heal, I genuinely don't know what you're doing half the run, just standing there doing nothing or healing people who don't need healing

I don't feel like I have to, but I just get bored otherwise. It didn't occur to me that I should DPS as a healer, until one day I just thought "What can I do to be more useful?" Without necessarily saying healers aren't being useful if they don't DPS, I'm just saying there are times you aren't going to be doing anything, and those times are usually better spent doing something like DPSing.

[randysquirrel]

I don't feel like I have to, but I just get bored otherwise. It didn't occur to me that I should DPS as a healer, until one day I just thought "What can I do to be more useful?" Without necessarily saying healers aren't being useful if they don't DPS, I'm just saying there are times you aren't going to be doing anything, and those times are usually better spent doing something like DPSing.

I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me or not lol...
but what you said is exactly how I feel as well.

I either dps, or I stand there doing nothing, so may as well. A few gravity's into a trash pack might not be ground-breaking dps, but it still makes it a bit quicker, and is certainly less boring than standing with my thumb up my butt lol

[Rawrz]

...is certainly less boring than standing with my thumb up my butt lol

[HyperiusUltima]

To be honest I think it's less about the stats and more about what the devs create content for, based on where people should be in progression. Messing with stats won't really change anything, but overall they made it more geared towards healers healing rather than attacking. Most people want faster runs as usual, just because it makes the game go by faster and you can skip phases.

Despite what happens, when you know a fight and know what happens as a healer, you're capable of adding extra DPS. The whole "Healer DPS Metagame" is just entirely dependent on the person's skill and capability to foresee what will happen in a fight at any given time. There also are DPS windows for Healers, which need to be timed right to work. Hot Tail/Wing from Nidhogg are good examples because he stops his DPS to cast those two abilities back-to-back explicitly, allowing extra damage or healing to be done while dealing with the mechanics from Horrid Roar and Hot Tail/Wing.

[Alistaire]

Sounds like the misconception that healers contributing to dps is something "to carry the dps players". Healers should dps because that's how this game is built.

[Estellios]

Sounds like the misconception that healers contributing to dps is something "to carry the dps players". Healers should dps because that's how this game is built.

The Conjurer storyline even tries to drill it into your head that dealing damage is something that you need to do once in a while.

The fact I can swap between healing and DPS when required is the reason I like healing in this game at all in the first place. Getting breathing room to throw in some DPS is a good indication that you are doing a good job keeping the group alive. Some breathing room at all is necessary for anything outside of Savage-tier stuff. You need to allow mistakes to be made for people that aren't as geared or aren't as skilled.

I feel like Weeping City is a pretty good level of challenge for healers in casual content, despite my frustrations with bad healers in it. There's a lot to pay attention to but most of the time you can recover from a wipe or near-wipe if you are judicious and smart with your healing, and if your group is doing well you can throw out DPS or help out other groups if they are struggling.

[Astrelle_hyperion]

I only have end-game experience in this game, not in other MMOs, so I'm genuinely curious, what alternate healer meta's can there be?

Lets assume (and these are all ballpark figures don't think it changes if you shift them down. If you shift them up it changes some)
Story mode content (dungeons, story trials) are tuned for something in the 50-65% player skill range at min iLvl
Extreme Priamls in the 75-85% range
Savage Raides in the 85+

(this percentage applies to doing the role to the best of a players ability, whether that's bringing damage, heals, maintaining aggro, avoiding avoidable damage, not tunnel vision on dps alone)

So if we're tuned for not requiring 100% heal out of the healers, what do you want the meta to push the good/exceptional healers to do with their down time?
Add extra optional mechanics that help the raid (increase dps, decrease damage taken, etc) and expect the good healers to have time to interact with them?
Add ability to stack shields/stoneskin: ie stockpile mitigation if you're already that far ahead? (which means things just get more boring)
Allow healers to build up some stacks of "readiness" for each gcd skipped that can proc surecast or something (procing swift would probably be too strong)

The last one is the only thing that feels like it not either a) functionally the same as healer dps or b) not completely cheesable.

While increasing the amount of tank and raid-wide damage going out increases the time spent healing, outside of the savage raids, I can't see the content being tuned to require 100% healing effort-- because that would also imply that a missed heal, or a failed dodge would likely wipe en expert dungeon and I don't think people want DF to implode that way Just look at the number of healers who don't precast for Hellwind for example.

[Khalithar]

I only have end-game experience in this game, not in other MMOs, so I'm genuinely curious, what alternate healer meta's can there be?

I have played a lot of other MMO's and there are a few, these are the healing styles we don't have in this game:

1. Triage style. You get a variety of different heals and you have to learn which one is the best to use. The basic heal that is MP and HP efficient? The big slow heal that costs a lot? The fast heal that goes off when you need it but is very expensive to cast? With the right damage tuning this can make a healer constantly have to heal while forcing them to consider which button to hit lest running out of mana becomes a threat.

2. Buffing/Debuffing. This is mostly built around maintaining buffs on your allies or debuffs on your enemies to make healing easier while keeping everyone alive. Depending on the nature of this though it can be a little overwhelming, depends on how many different spells you get.

3. HoT focused. Healers like this do have some single target stuff but their main focus is keeping HoTs rolling on their allies at all times and anticipating when to use their larger heals. So rather than burst healing it's more about constant HoT ticks maintaining the party.

These are specifically healing types that don't involve dps at all. I've seen other healers in other MMO's where DPS was part of the healing, disc priest from WoW had a build like this and so did the Warrior Priest from Warhammer though they functioned very differently.