What if, healers are not healers?

[Llynd]

Oh aion... I wish scholars could be like chanters/bard there...

[Ilan]

Oh aion... I wish scholars could be like chanters/bard there...

And i wish the WHM would be like the OLD cleric (pre new stigma bullshit) but then the threads of people who complain about the WHM dps would never stop. Aion class design doesn't fit here at all and thats good that way.

[Feyona]

I regrettably have to inform you that among all healers SCH has the worst DPS potency spells

The reason why people tell you SCH is a dps healer, is not because of their "better" dps tool or weaker heal (have SCH ever considered weak? ), but because SCH is BUILT for dps while healing/mitigating/supporting.

If you think SCH should heal only and stay away from cleric cause you have so many amazing spells like you listed, then, you are playing sch wrong :|

This really is not my opinion it the reason I have been given. Plus if I have been playing scholar 'wrong' then I've made a damn good job of healing with it so far. Its only people's opinions really Also I really do have those healing spells, and I can actually just heal very effectively. That is actually my preferred way of playing, I would like to be able to choose thats all.

[RizenSaga]

I liked your post. You clearly put a lot of thought and effort into it, and you aren't wrong. (This game has a lot of messed up terminology.)

MMO's have been based on the holy trinity; Damage Dealer, Tank and Healer. It makes everything easier. When we group I know quickly how to form my group. (I haven't assembled zero people that can take damage, 5 people that think they can do damage, a DD and one person who thinks he's a support). DPS refers to the Damage per second each player can do. (When people say dps they really mean DD.)

Imagine a healer isn't the best player and doesn't have the best gear. It takes all his effort to keep the party alive. This was how the game started. Healers weren't supposed to DD. Now some players got good/overgeared, or know the fight and started DDing. It's become the standard. (which it shouldn't be.) Once you have your role down you can do whatever makes you happy. Tanks take damage/hold hate, DD does high damage and healers keep party alive.

[Gemina]

This really is not my opinion it the reason I have been given. Plus if I have been playing scholar 'wrong' then I've made a damn good job of healing with it so far. Its only people's opinions really Also I really do have those healing spells, and I can actually just heal very effectively. That is actually my preferred way of playing, I would like to be able to choose thats all.

The thing about SCH, is the job branches from Arcanist, which is a DPS class. It goes into what Normalizer is talking about with how the class/job is built. CNJ as it levels to 30 continues to get more utility towards healing with little focus on offensive magicks. Arcanist as it levels to 30 is LOADED with offensive spells.

Upon receiving your SCH soulstone, even if I take away the fact that your fairy can take care of a great portion of the healing required, the utility SCH brings on their own still heavily favors that of DPS. Your fairy skills have their own CDs, so it is not a matter of having to choose between your SCH tool kit, and your fairy tool kit. Add to that, that for anything other than Physick casts, you literally hop in and out of Cleric to cast those abilities (over time it becomes muscle memory to do so), and it just comes out to having a MASSIVE window to DPS.

The title of this thread, though it compartmentalizes all healers, I feel is better directed right at SCH. It truly is a DPS/healer while WHM and AST would be Healer/DPS. I by no means take anything away from SCH as healers. I consider them to be the best "oh shit!" healers in the game because all of their 'oh-shit' abilities are instant, and only limited to aetherflow stacks and relatively short cool downs. So I just encourage you to remember that in every instance you go in as SCH, your ARC abilities comprise 60-85% of your entire tool kit depending on your level. I also encourage the 'ABC' rule (always be casting) while avoiding over healing.

[Zetor]

Interesting thread. I play healers in MMOs because - when the group is not outgearing the encounter - it's a pretty challenging and intuitive minigame of resource management (both my own and my team's), triage/prioritization and situational awareness combined with utility that helps my team recover from bad situations as well as help everyone kill things faster. If I just wanted to maximize my personal damage numbers, I'd play DPS (and I do!)... their damage abilities are more mechanically interesting than, say, the white mage dps 'rotation' (solo up to like level 46 it was like aero, stone 2 until dead).
Some examples of support / hybrid gameplay that were fun in other games:

City of Heroes: radiation/sonic defender. In addition to AOE healing the group, debuff the crap out of enemies, buff my team in response / preparation to certain enemy actions, control and nuke dangerous enemies with a pretty big selection of attack abilities (all of which would further debuff the enemy, increasing the amount of damage my team inflicted on them), some oh-crap cooldowns and summons, etc. Probably the best support role I've ever played.

Lord of the Rings Online: green-spec captain. Mainly beat on the most threatening enemy while buffing my team and debuffing theirs, including AOE stuns and interrupts. Spot heal as needed; also mark some of my allies with 'brother' skills that'd allow me to augment their offensive and defensive abilities (or have them be the target of some heals), switch as needed depending on who needs healing / damage assistance. This one was more about strategy than tactics, but still worked well as a hybrid.

Rift: lots of potential options here, but my favorite was probably senticar (sentinel/justicar/inquisitor) -- I could keep people up with traditional healing spells, but also heal them through doing damage, and I had plenty of offensive utility to crowd-control and debuff enemies as well... plus I had to regen mana by actively beating on enemies when Purpose was off CD. You could also go chloromancer as a mage, which AOE healed the group (and ST healed your priority target) directly based on your damage.

WOW: resto shaman. In addition to a large healing toolset, I can help the tank kite, help everyone move faster, interrupt enemy casts -- and my biggest 'heal' on non-boss encounters is a delayed AOE stun. I even have a reliable CC if needed... used to have even more utility, but much of it has been removed. Even though I have a grand total of 4 attack abilities, it's made somewhat more interesting by procs that can make one of them instant. This is probably the weakest example here, since resto shamans are the healer with the lowest DPS and least straight-up offensive power in WOW -- other healers have way better options, especially monks and disc priests.

Other games: Aion chanter, WAR warrior-priest, anyone in The Secret World... heck, even Age of Conan (Lance of Mitra was a directional attack that healed allies near enemies hit by it). Wildstar probably went too far in the other direction, IMO.

Anyway, my point is: which of those options I listed above has an analogue in FFXIV for a healer (esp WHM)? From my admittedly outdated experience as a white mage at level 50 a few years back, it was to switch to cleric stance and spam a spell or two to kill things faster. The only mechanically interesting dps spell was Holy because of the delayed damage/stun component, but it was also a massive mana hog, so couldn't cast it more than a few times... and the crowd control options that are actually pretty interesting (Repose, Fluid Aura, Stone 1) were barely ever used, especially Repose.

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TLDR: yes, doing damage as a healer is what you should be doing to increase group efficiency... but is it actually fun?