Healer & Tank DPS (WoW vs FFXIV)

[loreleidiangelo]

I raided WoW at mythic difficulty until the first big content patch hit Legion (by which point I'd had enough).

The healing design there is that healers are intended to be throwing out heals most of the time. If you don't outgear the content by a fair margin, you aren't going to have much free time to actually throw out any damage. And WoW healer damage is also pathetic by comparison to what the DPS and tanks can do. The one exception was discipline priest, which was designed around healing through casting offensive spells, and even they didn't have amazing DPS (if you had solid uninterrupted DPS and never had to stop to do healing, you could match a tank or a bad DPS of your own gear level).

That doesn't mean that healers in high end content don't still throw out damage. In fact, it's a very good idea to since all WoW healers have at least one mana-free method of dealing damage. And that damage can be important when pushing through new content. But in a 20 man raid, your 3-5 healers are going to account for maybe 1% of the raid's total DPS. A little more if you have a discipline priest (unless their design was radically changed since I last played), but overall not a significant amount.

And as for dungeon content, if you're doing mythic plus dungeons, you are going to be far too occupied trying to keep the group alive to have much of a DPS window.

Compare that all to here, where the healing comes in periodic bursts, and where in between those bursts you generally don't have a lot to do because your healing relative to a WoW healer is much more potent, and where a simple regen can do most of the work to negate a boss autoattacking the tank. That leaves you with time where you're not doing anything. If you're not doing anything, then there's no reason not to throw out some damage spells unless you know for sure that you risk running out of mana later into a fight if you throw one more nuke out. Healer DPS is very strong and can make up a significant portion of a group's overall damage when played well.

That's why it's made out to be an expectation here, and why in WoW people rarely care about it. The way the tanks and healers are modelled are very differently. In WoW, healers are intended to do little else besides heal, since tanks take a constant beating and healers can't just spike a tank from near death to a comfortable health level with 1 OGCD.

This is the truest and most correct answer, I think. Talk all you want about which is "better", it really just boils down to the fact that the tank and healer roles in World of Warcraft are designed with completely different end goals in mind. Tanks have a bunch of powerful cooldowns that in some ways can trivialize most easier content, and when things like Essential Dignity crit for half a tanks' health bar and almost all of a DPSs' health bar the combined result is really just that the only way you can remotely engage yourself is by trying to optimize your damage.

If XIV ever TRULY wants to get rid of the "tank and healer DPS meta" they need to start by nerfing the crap out of their general kits, and I'm not sure how well that would go over with the lower percentile of the playerbase.

EDIT: On further reflection, a lot of it is how CONTENT is designed, too. There are large spikes of damage, but at set intervals, so raid encounters are generally more about powering health bars back to full before the next "eff you" AOE or tank hit, and a ton of the mechanics for the most part are meant to be the sort that if you screw them up even marginally, you just get one-shot or possibly even wipe your entire raid group depending. In WoW, things aren't exactly set in stone (there's still limits to how "random" the fights truly are, of course), so for the most part there's a big constant emphasis on tanks always having a cooldown up and healers always having the party over a certain percentage of health just in case. In WoW raids are more about outlasting the boss; in XIV, it's more about dancing the mechs while optimizing so you don't hit enrage.

[miraidensetsu]

snip

DPS can simply muscle-memory their rotations and put little to no tought about what he is doing. Depending on the job and how well he knows the fight, that DPS just don't have to think at all. Just act according their reflex and muscle memory. A DPS job can be harder to learn, true, but once learned it becames easier than any other role.

But healers have things to manage. Sometimes cards (that are RANDOM), sometimes faeries, sometimes even their own MP bar. But they always manage HUMANS. And no human have a scripted way to act. And is up to the healer manage them to not let them die, even when some DPS think that is a good idea to stay inside the bad. Or the tank that pulls everything w/o using their CDs.

And a healer that don't pay attention to what their party members is doing, or he is a member of a static that knows the fights too well or he is overgeared or is just a bad healer.

[Zarabeth]

Basically, people seem to need something to complain about instead of working on their own skills.

[Fealow]

It's because 1. healing and tanking gameplay themselves are very simple and don't require much attention, so there's a lot of room for them to focus on DPS, 2.

This has actually triggered me... I never use that word when referring to myself because I save it for the snowflakes, but wtf? Have you even played a Healer or tank in this game in any kind of High end duty content. They are the most demanding roles! DPS is heavily focused on muscle memory for the role to be played optimally, Healers and tanks are reactionary and predictive based roles who also have to pick up the slack if a DPS is lacking in any department.

As a healer, if i'm only paying a little bit of attention as you suggest we only need to do then someone is likely going to die.

Don't get me wrong though the DPS role can be played smart to the benefit of the entire party, but the bare minimum that is required of a DPS is enough for the role to function as intended. The same is not true for healer and tank roles.

I normally would not attempt to butt heads with another forum user so soon, but you are delusional if you truly believe "very simple" and "don't require much attention" to be true for both healers and tanks.

[Gwaeron89]

Savage raids have specific dps thresholds that must be reached to kill boss before an enrage. So lets say boss requires 24k dps to beat and 4 dd cover 16-17k, that means that tanks and healers must cover 7-8k to success. Its not about liking or disliking, thats how it just works.
And outside of savage and ex primals, who cares.

[Elfidan]

Because casuals like to copy bleeding edge raiders here. Also, healer dps is waaaaaay OP.

This answers your question in a more exact and straight forward way than I believed possible. +1

[Viridiana_Sovari]

It's been said time and again, confirmed by the devs themselves, that dps check design doesn't take tank and healer dps into account. Stop blaming the tank and healers for your own inability to learn your job.

They don't take it into account for people who are at the recommended ilvl or higher atm. Try beating O4S with 0 healer dps right now. My group killed it with about 1k dps from each healer at the end of the fight last week, and that is on the low end compared to other groups.

[Sylvina]

Mechanics skipping mostly. The harder you smash a fight, the less bananas you have to deal with

Also, tanks and healers put out up to two thirds of a dps' damage, which is nothing to scoff at

They should. When the dps can do more than twice to three times the damage of a tank or healer there starts to be serious class balance issues.

[kattzkitti]

They should. When the dps can do more than twice to three times the damage of a tank or healer there starts to be serious class balance issues.

I see common sense is not your strong suit. If tanks and healers did damage on par with DPS, they would be incredibly overpowered. Hell, if anything, tanks and healers already do far too much damage as it is.

[NinjaTaru72]

While arr and hw were more for the "tank and healer dps" for stormblood they seek to be trying to push that mentality away. Unless there was a new announcement, last I heard was they were making str stuff on tanks much lower because the want tanks to tank. Lots of hp.

And healers are definitely having to heal more and dps less now.



Anyways. The whole healer dps is a bag of bombs in its own right. Personally, I believe healers can pick. If they just want to heal, let them. That's their roll. Any dps they do is extra.