Isn't playing WHM optimally going completely against what SE wants healers to be?

[Kabooa]

There was an HPS check pretty much every tier from what I remember.

Jogging my memory. The Heal Check in Dreamwalker was largely performing the float/bubble mechanic, as no amount of gear let you bypass the huge healing buff you received from said mechanic. You may collect the orbs periodically, but if memory serves, it was possible to chain the duration so that it never fell off, and kept it stacking to stupid levels. (Which falls under the 'handling a specific mechanic' part.)

Though you are right. Karazhan had one, SSC, TK had them, BC and Sunwell. Brutallus was just a straight up check all around. (Tank, healer, and DPS check in one).

[Tridus]

SE also wants us to spam Cure I, and Cure II for lillies but optimally we want to use as little as possible, and use Regen as much as possible.
Same goes with Scholar. I don't think anyone on the Dev team even plays a Healer.

SE said they didn't want people to have to look at buff bars for class abilities anymore and designed an entire job gauge UI system for that.

SE also gave us Plenary Indulgence at the same time, which required looking at buff bars to know who it was going to hit.

Sometimes, what SE says and what they do may not line up that well. IMO, all that YoshiP's infamous comment means is that they don't intend to design things such that healers doing optimal DPS is mandatory. They're not anti-healer DPS.


I mean, if they really wanted to kill healer DPS, they could. Instead of removing Cleric Stance, they could have made it so that you can't remove it (like a Sect). Then you can choose if you want to DPS or heal in a given fight, and can't change your mind. Done.

Just with the way healing is right now, people go from full to low to full very quickly. You don't typically need to sustain chain healing. You rarely run out of MP. So there's no particular reason not to throw some DPS out except not wanting to.

[Gemina]

Sometimes I think "pure healer" is taken out of context. People seem to think that this means a WHM does nothing but heal, and does not deal damage. When taken in this context it does indeed seem contradictory to what SE wants WHM to be. If that was the case though, we wouldn't have Holy, Assize, rocks to throw, and wind magic to cut down enemies.

Rather, I believe a pure healer is one who really doesn't have any fancy gimmicks to their restorative ability. No shields, no pet assistance, no cards, no dance steps, just raw heals. The high cost of Cure 2 is there for a reason, because it restores insane HP even without buffs; w/ buffs it usually heals more than what is necessary.

I really don't get why this upsets people. Do you want SE to take away WHMs damage capability? Or do you want to them to come out and admit that WHM isn't a pure healer? I get the whole lack of raid utility thing, but other than that WHM is pretty solid.

[Saefinn]

I think WHM should be able to hold its own DPS. For me I've always viewed WHM to be:
-A powerful raw & reactive healer with superior AoE healing ability.
-A healer that sustains HP with decent HoT's
-A healer with good burst damage and AoE damage. Holy used to be the best AoE in the game, not the highest potency, but high enough and spammable enough to make stuff melt.

Given WHM cannot increase the DPS of the party, it should have the highest personal DPS among the healers (whilst still healing), followed by SCH, followed by AST (because of the usefulness of cards).

I think SE are stumbling a bit with what they're doing with healers. Personally, I think SE should take a leaf out of XI's book, even if it is from XI's later life. Run a test server before updates, have select player candidates use the test server and provide feedback on these changes. I see that as being how to get around "well the dev team don't play these jobs".

[Trunks]

I think SE are stumbling a bit with what they're doing with healers. Personally, I think SE should take a leaf out of XI's book, even if it is from XI's later life. Run a test server before updates, have select player candidates use the test server and provide feedback on these changes. I see that as being how to get around "well the dev team don't play these jobs".

Every game I have ever played that used this testing approach had 10x the number and severity of balance problems that FFXIV has ever had. The devs might bumble around a bit, but they are impartial at least; they want to make a good game. When you start throwing fanatical advocates for this and that Job into the mix, everything gets turned into a melodramatic zero-sum game. While, yes, players tend to have more practical knowledge of how things play, they can't see past the ends of their own noses and almost never act in good faith for the betterment of overall balance in the meta.

[VanilleFang]

they can't see past the ends of their own noses and almost never act in good faith for the betterment of overall balance in the meta.

You have to look no further than the forums to realize this. The "balance" changes people want for x job are generally ridiculous and overtuned. They don't normally seem to look passed their tiny little box of their job during this specific situation.

[Mimilu]

The devs might bumble around a bit, but they are impartial at least; they want to make a good game.

I question both these statements... >w>

[Sebazy]

The devs might bumble around a bit, but they are impartial at least; they want to make a good game.

I do agree that they are impartial, but I also feel that they are lacking a little something when it comes to the healer classes. Imagination? Experience? Enthusiasm? Pretty much any of these and more stick quite well in my eyes unfortunately.

WHM is a pretty solid job and outside of it's lack of raid utility it's pretty hard to fault it. But then that's most likely because I was playing nigh enough the same class 18 years ago in Everquest. Give a Luclin era Shaman a few choice Paladin heals such as healing wave of prexus and you've effectively got today's FFXIV WHM. It works though and to be fair, most MMOs can get away with having one classical healer in the roster.....

AST is practically a carbon copy of WHM with a few tweaked values, a now over complex card system bolted ontop and ghetto 'SCH' functionality literally gaffer taped onto the side of the class. Uninventive, uninspired and it's forever going to be a nightmare to balance.

SCH was pretty unique at launch and whilst HW mostly worked on it's raw HPS throughput, Deploy did a good job of reinforcing it's identity and role within the game. SB's launch saw the job brutally kicked to the curb, 4.05 gave it a plaster and a little red ribbon and left it at that, now it's sat there looking a bit disorientated and unsure where it's going to go next.

Compare healer gameplay from FFXIV to the likes of Warhammer Online or even World of Warcraft and it's a very different kettle of fish. Both of these games had a wide variety of healing jobs with Warhammer's roster being particularly notable (A melee DPS healer that was both balanced and trememdously enjoyable to play, whodathoughtit). Whilst I suspect that Yoshida is rather hamstrung by SE's financial department, my sympathy only goes so far. I refuse to believe that he wouldn't be able to hire a couple of proven players out of the JP community to help spruce up and invigorate the class design team somewhat.

[VanilleFang]

I question both these statements... >w>

You must not know the history of FFXIV if you question that the devs might want to make a good game.

[TaleraRistain]

Not sure where he got that exact quote from, but even the novice hall, the content meant to TEACH you your role tells you to aid in dpsing if there's nothing else going on.

People misquote this a lot. The Master of Magicks says "When you've healed all there is to heal, there may be time to weave in some offensive magics.". I'm at work so I don't have the screenshot I've made of this and that's all I can remember of that part. But they go on next to say something about making sure you fulfill your healing role first. So it's all packaged as something optional, which is the way Yoshi-P has always addressed it.