What I've realized about healing in XIV...

[Gameplayzero]

I don't know, maybe you just have a really short attention span or something so you can't be bothered to try to optimize your playing? With your posts about how well you tank though I have to assume that can't be the case.

Does this really need to resort to insults? Especially without some examples to back your case.

[MoroMurasaki]

DPSing as a tank feels rewarding for good play. DPSing as a healer feels like being the average Joe Schmoe with how common it is in every party I've ever been in. I never not see a healer DPSing .

So you are saying the rewarding feeling you get as a tank doing something more than minimal damage is greater than that of a healer because (in your view) tank DPS is rarer? This hinges on that being true which just doesn't seem to be the case.

Given your history on these forums I would think you would be aware of the constant healer DPS debate that has gone on at least since I came here. How could that debate exist on such a large scale if the opposition only consisted of a few, rare non-DPSing healers?

The short answer is that there are plenty of healers who contribute zero DPS and are proud of it while this is a much different dynamic among tanks who have their damage built in to their primary function as well as having their damage built into the expectations of actual fights.

Tank DPS isn't rare. Perhaps good tank DPS is rarer than general healer DPS but if you add up damage done by tanks and healers side by side in this game healers definitely contribute less because some of us do literally none.

Does this really need to resort to insults? Especially without some examples to back your case.

I wouldn't call that an insult, especially considering I literally say that isn't the case in your quote bubble right there. Sharing my impressions on someone else's playstyle isn't a crime.

Also is making a completely off topic post necessary? Especially when the thing you're criticizing is negated in the same post.

[Gameplayzero]

was more of a stealth insult. You wouldn't say someones attention span is short otherwise (considering healer dps rotations in this thread are regarded as very short). I know its the internet, but I get rather tired of people doing this with the "you must be bad" or "you must have something x". But if I assumed too much then I apologize.

Ignoring all this, I replied to you to hear how similar dps is to healer rotations. Not to antagonize. Healer rotations currently are dot(s) and filler spell that is being spammed majority of the time. With the max being 2 dots primarily. I will not count miasma 2 because you are only using it as a gain in very few situations. I want to hear what dps jobs have similar mechanics and/or why you said what you said. Healers don't really have dps procs and step casting in general I wouldn't classify as every job with casting (even paladin for dpsing and healing) has to do that for their main function. Every healer definitely does have 1 dps cooldown, but not really many to worry about. Whm has assize and PoV. Though assize is mainly it since it also does damage and heals. Sch has energy drain and chain stratagemish, and astro I'm not fully knowledgeable on. All I know is lord cards and earthly star. Which aren't primarily used for dpsing. Cleric is also a dps cool down.

compared to dps it just isn't remotely the same. I agree if you are just stating they share some stuff that dps have. Almost every job does in every mmo. A good amount of content in this game doesn't have you healing constantly to where you constantly are juggling heals and dps as you mention unless you make it that way with stance dancing/big pulls, players are bad, or you are in savage. Even then savage is the only consistent place for juggling. Auto attacks are fluff damage and your dps rotation just doesn't keep you on your toes. Even in primal fights now you can dps a good majority of the fight if everyone isn't messing up.


edit: also tanks do 70% (or about) the damage of a regular dps. Can't say thats minimal. And their new skills are primarily dps skills.

[MoroMurasaki]

was more of a stealth insult. You wouldn't say someones attention span is short otherwise (considering healer dps rotations in this thread are regarded as very short). I know its the internet, but I get rather tired of people doing this with the "you must be bad" or "you must have something x". But if I assumed too much then I apologize.

Ignoring all this, I replied to you to hear how similar dps is to healer rotations. Not to antagonize. Healer rotations currently are dot(s) and filler spell that is being spammed majority of the time. With the max being 2 dots primarily. I will not count miasma 2 because you are only using it as a gain in very few situations. I want to hear what dps jobs have similar mechanics and/or why you said what you said. Healers don't really have dps procs and step casting in general I wouldn't classify as every job with casting (even paladin for dpsing and healing) has to do that for their main function. Every healer definitely does have 1 dps cooldown, but not really many to worry about. Whm has assize and PoV. Though assize is mainly it since it also does damage and heals. Sch has energy drain and chain stratagemish, and astro I'm not fully knowledgeable on. All I know is lord cards and earthly star. Which aren't primarily used for dpsing. Cleric is also a dps cool down.

compared to dps it just isn't remotely the same. I agree if you are just stating they share some stuff that dps have. Almost every job does in every mmo. A good amount of content in this game doesn't have you healing constantly to where you constantly are juggling heals and dps as you mention unless you make it that way with stance dancing/big pulls, players are bad, or you are in savage. Even then savage is the only consistent place for juggling. Auto attacks are fluff damage and your dps rotation just doesn't keep you on your toes. Even in primal fights now you can dps a good majority of the fight if everyone isn't messing up.


edit: also tanks do 70% (or about) the damage of a regular dps. Can't say thats minimal. And their new skills are primarily dps skills.

I'm not sure where you think I said something that would require you to edit in that comment about tank DPS - the majority of my post was about how tank DPS is (as an overall thing) higher than healer DPS because almost everything they do for their primary role does damage unlike healers who spend many more GCD's doing no damage at all. I am right here with you on this one - tank damage is big. It is also a given though. Tank damage is built into the calculations that determine things like enemy health and enrage timers. Healer DPS (whether amazing or meh) is always gravy.

If I came off snarky it was intentional - I strongly disagree with the post I quoted and intended to show how nonsensical it was. Perhaps you and I have differing definitions of an insult but in my mind, while I wasn't nice, I insulted no one.

I see that you are arguing that healer DPS is too simple and to that I also refer you to my previous post. Separating your time spent healing from DPSing (especially without the CS issues) is already impossible unless during your DPS you aren't watching your party list and keeping an eye on the tank. To be able to watch for the level of procs and dots that a DPS manages while also keeping everyone alive is not feasable for most players. Healer DPS has factors that DPS rotations don't, including something even less predictable than RNG procs; the free will of our party.

Tanks have to think about this, albeit to a much smaller extent, surrounding enmity generation and even their own health pool. DPS jobs with support abilities like Refresh, Goad and Mana Shift have to think about it even less than tanks.

DPS rotations get more complex the further out from the center of that you get. To expect a healer to be able to put out considerable, consistant DPS with a complicated rotation when they also have to compensate for all manner of human error and "lag" in a party is just insane. People complain now about healers tunnel visioning into DPS and letting them die; can you imagine how much this would be magnified if your WHM had to choose between losing Enochian and letting the tank maybe take just one more auto attack? It would be chaos.

It would require a rework of the battle system and the way damage happens to the party on such a massive scale it would be a new game. Either you trivialize damage to such a huge extent that there is no reason to have a healer or you make it so that to be a healer you need to already be incredibly better than the vast majority of the playerbase. Neither is preferable to the current system in my opinion.

In closing you seem to think that healer DPS rotations need to be complicated but healers are not DPS. We have different priorities and to have us manage things to the extent of DPS while intrinsically having more responaibility than those DPS we are seeking to emulate means no one would play healers and only a very select few could play them well enough to clear content without foregoing DPS entirely. While I understand your core concept I don't think it is applicable in this game as it exists today.

[RichardButte]

Now, that's a false ultimatum, obviously, but if we're to label one "whack-a-mole" grid-gaze healing fits the description far better than... I can't even picture what would possibly be whack-a-mole in XIV; if you're not precasting against the damage, you're already doing it wrong.

The WAM element comes from players taking otherwise avoidable damage (which you cannot ever truly predict).

Other than that, I'd enjoy healing more if there was more involvement to it but healing itself feels very basic.

I think the best way to illustrate what I mean is that healing doesn't really have a "rotation" in the same way DPS has a rotation.

XIV's DPS are constantly running through their rotations (much like WoW's DPS), but unlike WoW's healers, XIV's have periods where they've nothing else to do except throw a few damaging spells at the boss with mana they might want to save for unpredictable damage (I've had things go south very suddenly in many a dungeon/raid and found myself wishing I hadn't done any DPS...).

Like I mentioned earlier, WoW's healers have "maintenance rotations" that they're almost constantly performing to keep the tank/party/raid healed. You always have buttons to press that serve your role: healing, and one of the reasons I'm sure a lot of XIV's healers are irked by the whole "Y U NO DPS, HEALER?!?" debacle is because they probably leveled a healer because they enjoy healing, not healing 25% of the time and being a crappy DPS with a bland "rotation" the other 75%.

Healers in WoW aren't expected to DPS because there's almost always healing to do, and they also have a plethora of varied and interesting ways to do that healing.

To put this another way, if a healer in XIV had a DPS' rotation instead, they wouldn't just be healing through a "single target, multi target, shield or HoT" setup. They'd be doing things like firing off an instant cast, low mana cost, low potency heal that they can then combo into 3-4 different types of heals that the healer could choose on the fly for the situation at hand, and they'd do this the entire raid in order to heal up the tank who's constantly taking a steady stream of damage.

But the healers in this game don't even have what could be loosely called a "rotation" because any real damage comes out in such bursts and at such scripted intervals that healing takes a backseat to DPSing half the time. Instead of being the main focus of these classes, healing has become just a box on the "checklist of things to do before going back to DPSing", and that sucks for anyone who actually wants to play a pure healer.

And the worst part? It's WAY too late to fix it, because healing is designed around boss encounters throughout the game and they're not about to go back and change literally everything about how these boss encounters happen.

DPS rotations get more complex the further out from the center of that you get. To expect a healer to be able to put out considerable, consistant DPS with a complicated rotation when they also have to compensate for all manner of human error and "lag" in a party is just insane.

...Which is why the healer experience would be dramatically improved if you could focus on healing the entire time.

Healing itself in XIV isn't that engaging, nowhere NEAR on par with the rotations of DPS classes, but healing classes in other MMOs DO have rotations that are fun, engaging, and occupy so much of a healer's time that no one will ever be pestering them to DPS.

This is where FFXIV fails in healer design: if healers are being berated for not contributing to DPS, something is very obviously wrong with the way encounters and/or healer abilities are designed.

[Gameplayzero]

In closing you seem to think that healer DPS rotations need to be complicated but healers are not DPS. We have different priorities and to have us manage things to the extent of DPS while intrinsically having more responaibility than those DPS we are seeking to emulate means no one would play healers and only a very select few could play them well enough to clear content without foregoing DPS entirely. While I understand your core concept I don't think it is applicable in this game as it exists today.

Sorry for misunderstanding about tank thing. I definitely misread. Though I didn't make mention at all of making healer rotations more complicated I don't think. I will say that currently if they want to keep the meta of healers being a pseudo dps, then they need to make it slightly better than it currently is. You might disagree, but healers and tanks aren't pure roles in this game. They are dps hybrids. They state that the game is not made around healer dps and you can argue that the dps skills are solely for soloing. Problem is that thanks to the game being as such, it lends itself to so much downtime that healers are mainly only healing in burst situations. Your attention shouldn't be focused so much on healing if mechanics are done properly. The greatest example of this is O4S solo heal posted recently which still is very insane to do. At worst you hit your spell and go right back to dpsing. Tanks have aggro rotation that they apply only when needed and then go right to dps rotation, hit cool downs when needed, and forget. I'm not separating time at all either. As you will have plenty of time dpsing more than healing in most content. I feel your examples apply in a raid setting or in bad groups, but not so much in majority of the content. Healing at its base in casual content doesn't require too much attention. This is coming from a healer main since HW.

[MoroMurasaki]

...Which is why the healer experience would be dramatically improved if you could focus on healing the entire time.


Healing itself in XIV isn't that engaging, nowhere NEAR on par with the rotations of DPS classes, but healing classes in other MMOs DO have rotations that are fun, engaging, and occupy so much of a healer's time that no one will ever be pestering them to DPS.

This is where FFXIV fails in healer design: if healers are being berated for not contributing to DPS, something is very obviously wrong with the way encounters and/or healer abilities are designed.

I have to give you leeway here because FFXIV is my first MMO and I can't say for sure that I wouldn't enjoy your proposal because I've never experienced it.

That aside I feel like this system already exists in WoW (by your own admission and multiple citings) and I am not playing WoW. I have no desire to play WoW.

Your argument boils down to feelings - you feel like FFXIV healer DPS is bland and therefor removable from gameplay to have your "healing rotations" from WoW.

I feel that the chaotic, unpredictable damage that a pug group takes is engaging and fitting DPS into the spaces that you find to do so adds another layer of engagement that your WoW system wouldn't really have.

I don't think this constitutes a "failure in healer design", SE did something different with their healers and I'm thankful to have variety in the market. I don't mean to come off as rude or dismissive of your views, I appreciate the amount of thought you put into them, but why should we become WoW when it already exists? If you'd like to play that style healer it exists for you; go play it! Please don't take the healing that I enjoy away from me though, it does not exist in another huge MMO franchise that I can hop to if FFXIV healers become WoW healers.

Sorry for misunderstanding about tank thing. I definitely misread. Though I didn't make mention at all of making healer rotations more complicated. I will say that currently if they want to keep the meta of everyone being a pseudo dps, then they need to make it slightly better than it currently is. You might disagree, but healers and tanks aren't pure roles in this game. They are dps hybrids. They state that the game is not made around healer dps and you can argue that the dps skills are solely for soloing. Problem is that thanks to the game being as such, it lends itself to so much downtime that healers are mainly only healing in burst situations. Your attention shouldn't be focused so much on healing if mechanics are done properly. At worst you hit your spell and go right back to dpsing. Tanks have aggro rotation that they apply only when needed and then go right to dps rotation, hit cool downs when needed, and forget. I'm not separating time at all either. As you will have plenty of time dpsing more than healing in most content. I feel your examples apply in a raid setting or in bad groups, but not so much in majority of the content. Healing at its base in normal content isn't challenging.

It's funny how in different context you can wind up on another side of a debate. I am very much in favor of healers fitting as much DPS in as is possible, I do it myself all the time, but I also know (from my forays into tanking or DPSing as well as my boyfriend who mains WAR) that there are lots of healers out there who are already struggling to DPS even with the simplistic DPS skills we have now.

If we tailor healer DPS to the healing level required for Keeper of the Lake we will have no healers capable of DPSing in Susano EX or Royal Menagerie because the difference is too large. Things need to be tuned around EX/Savage because anything that works there will work in more basic content but that doesn't work in reverse. The down time you have in a 4 man dungeon (especially with a basically competent party) is huge compared to endgame, if you need more complication to your healing then start on Savage - as you request you will not have so much Stone IV spamming but rather need to always be on the move.

[Gameplayzero]

the problem with the "go to savage" argument is savage is 1% or more of the game. You have to do casual content to get to savage first and foremost. Which is where my argument is coming from. Damage isn't really unpredictable and is all scripted except in chaotic instances. This is standard mmo fair, but I don't count those chaotic instances because they are so infrequent. Maybe I'm completely wrong since I've never played WoW, but in other mmos dpsing is a luxury. Not saying I hate dpsing, but I'm not as engaged.

though I also want to make it clear that if you enjoy this style of healing then awesome! Just as a scholar main for awhile and having used whm in the past off and on, I just can't enjoy it as much as I used to. Not even talking about cleric stance. Just their normal dps tool kit.

[Shurrikhan]

The WAM element comes from players taking otherwise avoidable damage (which you cannot ever truly predict).

If you're staring at your party list waiting for someone to **** up so you can deal with it at cost of an oGCD or a whole 2 seconds later... don't. If you can't play confidently and predicatively, there's no way healing is going to "click" comfortably... here or in almost any other MMO.

Other than that, I'd enjoy healing more if there was more involvement to it but healing itself feels very basic.

I think the best way to illustrate what I mean is that healing doesn't really have a "rotation" in the same way DPS has a rotation.

I've healed in WoW across every expansion, Rift, Tera, GW2, and less trinity-based games. Certain XIV's classes actually fit that description as much as the most "rotational" healers of the best of them. Any rotation attached to healers thus far has never been in healing alone. It's been in allowing yourself the measure of space to DPS, and taking maximal advantage of your most efficient spells and abilities. Regen, Aero, Aero II, Divine Benison, and the whole arsenal of your other CDs... those are as close to a rotation you're going to get. In WoW there are certain cycles of spell power that make up some small part thereof; Undulation and Life Pulse talents allow every xth spell to hit for more, to be timed (usually not as handily as one would hope) to precastable TB recovery; Torrent and Illumination allow hastened follow-up spells after your CD / resource skills. Is that what you're looking for? Variation in spell rate? Bankable mechanical resources to enhance spell rate, allowing preparation for heightened intake beyond mere CD saving? That's not exactly rotational, but I can see the interest.

In my experience as a WoW healer, especially since Legion, I have been expected to DPS when I've nothing else to do. Why? Because it tends to be essentially to literally mana-free, and oftentimes even provides mechanical resources by which to enhance my healing. It's actually far more integrated into certain classes there (not even mentioning Discipline) than any here. Before the left to Holy Shock, Holy Paladins were outbursting many a near-equally geared DPS on bosses in quick daily dungeon runs. Restoration Shamans still contribute regular AoE dps. Mistweaver Monks still depend partly on mana regeneration from their melee attacks. Holy Priests have a incredibly powerful damaging instant ranged stun fueled by their spammable filler. I regularly threw out no more than a few healing GCDs per boss fight during my own daily dungeons. And it goes beyond casual content played at an efficient level. Take any PuG Ursoc heroic run near the first tier's release; when DPS was falling short, the first thing most parties tended to look at was healer CD coverage... and healer and tank DPS (especially where synergetic to their respective roles).

So let's not blow this WoW-to-XIV paradigm shift out of proportion. The priorities are the same. The expectations are the same. The fight-driven availability of dps GCDs/windows is all that differs.

This is where FFXIV fails in healer design: if healers are being berated for not contributing to DPS, something is very obviously wrong with the way encounters and/or healer abilities are designed.

That in itself is no failure. Healers are not heal-bots. They are casters equipped with healing spells, and will remain as such until their damaging skills are entirely removed, and the role is thereby condemned to aggressive compositional trimming and narcoleptic gameplay. Until they consistently have something better to be doing, YES, they should be contributing in some other way. Asking that they continue to contribute is not an issue. Allowing for a portion of healer contribution to be something other than healing is not an issue; by diverting difficulty into something that impacts the party less obviously, less skilled players can play without wiping their party at every point they do not perform as well as the best, or, if tuned lower, the best have additional means to contribute. Too much time spent on 4 keys that don't particularly synergize with the other 20+? Now that may be an issue. Not by principle, but in the simple sense that it doesn't feel quite "right" or "involved" and could feel "better" with adjustments.

[MoroMurasaki]

I also sympathize with you - it sucks that this style of healing isn't for you. I don't think that that justifies changing up the entire healer and damage model for the game but I can appreciate that it's a facet of the game you don't enjoy.

I will say that the "go savage" argument is less about you having content to do and more about you understanding how hard it would be for a savage healer to have a complicated DPS rotation. Whether or not you play savage changing the identity of healers to something that suddenly just can't put out damage in savage seems unfair to me.

Will I acquiesce that they could toss on another DoT or something? Sure. But if you want an AST to have to manage stackslike a MNK or have anything that complicated I just feel like it would be a disaster.