Why you should play a healer!

[Vyriah]

Saying it's all just a script is well and good, actually executing it like such is a whole different matter and you know it.

Actually not that much.

I did kill O3S with a RDM the week I leveled it up to 70. I played it safe as hell and certainly lost a lot of DPS but mission clear is mission clear no matter what. I already knew the whole fight, it was just a matter of applying the knew boutton press to it.
The result wasn't amazing, but it was enough.

Also, I'm pretty sure you all misunderstand what Jerichai is trying to say, I'm not sure why every seems so eager to argue against his post. Espcially from someone playing SCH, a very busy job whithout clear routine but time restricted abilities. Out of the three healers, SCH really is the partition playing robot with all its CD and 3 time every minute 45s skills to use.
Except when you mess up, everyone die horribly.

[Sebazy]

You're either missing or ignoring my point, great job.

And no, it's not purely mistakes that cause this at all. There are plenty of encounters with a wide variety of forced disconnects that can require different very approaches from the standard target dummy rotation. But I assume you know this right?

So people are often overstating how much DPS mistakes impact the ability to complete content.

Gordias called and said hi btw. DPS checks and enrage timers are a thing, it might not be 3.0 anymore, but O4S is still a notable hurdle for most, let alone Faustania.

I did kill O3S with a RDM the week I leveled it up to 70. I played it safe as hell and certainly lost a lot of DPS but mission clear is mission clear no matter what.

That's pretty much my point, if it was effortless to execute, you'd have been able to face roll your rotation for the full fight no?

[Vyriah]

I'm not.

Even if applying it to the fight is different than the dummy, there's a basis for it and the only question is "how can I find my way arround it ?". The optimisation get really steep at some point, but knowing the fight and knowing your job is already a really good start.

Also, you wouldn't even do dummy if you wern't up for a fight anyway. The way to tackle the fight is the fun part of DPS, not the hurdle. The hurdle is everyone thinking you're 12 years old because you play SAM.
Or playing BLM.
Then forget what I said, DPS is hell.

Edit :

Ah, it wasn't for me.
I'm pretty sure no one saying that DPS is faceroll. FF XIV DPS are pretty busy in their own way. But it's because they don't have funny UI with shiny new bar and count down that they have less restriction than others. they just tend to work the other way : they timers when their tool isn't up. Thing is, those are often life or death bouttons.

If messing that wildfire would explode are your tank face and kill hom giving you all its aggro, i sure as hell you would consider pressing that as something much, much more than "eh, it's just a cooldown". One time I casted earthly star on the wind III tank buster instead of the start of the second grand cross delta. That ended up in a agonizing wipe where almagest's DoT slowly killed everyone and I completly knew this would happen 30 second beforehand.
Those cooldowns are serious buisness, you have to pay respect to them.

[Sebazy]

Aye no I can agree with that.

Whilst SSS has it's uses, you'll rarely see progression raiders bothering with it because it's not really relevant to the content it's 'pretending' to be. As you say, it's the optimisation that wins the day.

Makes me wish my group was willing to run Bahamut more, relevant end game content that's not been spoilered optimised to death is a pleasant rarity but finding pugs capable of both maintaining enough DPS whilst also being able to survive twisters with a reasonable degree of reliability is challenging to say the least =(

[Jerichai]

Snip

No one is talking about target dummies. The fact is there's an optimal script for each Job on each encounter. Things like where to use CDs, where to position, etc. it varies from fight to fight, but nonetheless it's a script and it usually follows core concepts inherent to the Job.

[Sebazy]

Indeed, which leads us neatly back to my original point in that healers are not bound to the script in anything like the same manner as DPS (or tanking jobs to a different extent).

I can shuffle my opener around in all sorts of ways and bar a catastrophic mistake or just doing something really stupid, it'll make little difference outside a few hundred DPS. Damage dealers on the other hand don't have that luxury. They need to follow that script as tight as they can and of course, even the slightest deviations can start to add up very significantly and this is before we start thinking about the additional complexity that raiding with 7 other meatbags brings.

Whilst I agree that DPS rotations certainly aren't rocket science, I feel that your argument is built on the thinking that it's significantly easier to apply said rotations to an encounter than it often actually is. Thus where the disagreement with Cyn comes in.

[Vyriah]

I'm not sure how it ended up that way but I'm pretty sure it the other way arround : Cyn stated that healers have more simple mechanic. But everyone agree that pulling of that NIN out that INV properly is nothing to brush off.

If you don't have a rotation, every single cast is a decision. I'm not found how FF XIV handle and I wrote a wall of text somewhere else about that, but it's doesn't matter, you can't brush off that either as simplier than, let's say, melee DPS routines (that have the reputation to be really daunting at first but get more and more mechanical as you get the hang of them).

DPS is about consistancy, but healers are about adaptation. It's funny because I see the opposite as describer before : DPS need flexibility to get their partition going despite the bullshit but healer answer mechanic upfront with either "player live" or "player die" as a result. Any means is good, but you have to get that "player live" every time. And that require proper planing and to be 100% sure that when you press that boutton, it's for a good reason.

You talked about DPS check like Gordias or TwintwinsterFaust, but healers are also concerned by this. The thigher the DPS is, the more healer have to contribute. And the more they have to get that on point heal, those DoTs refresh between mechanic and raid heal and their constant filler spamming that can get 500 raid damage increase that DPS couldn't possible make in normal circonstances.
And that require a huge awarness on everything that happen and just the target switching that go with it add a stress that DPS will mostly ignore.

But then, I can imagine people having more ease at doing that than other. Personnally, I'm in the backline strategy team and I'm pretty confident in my capacity to understand how things work but when too much thing go off at the same time I have extremly hard time to follow everything. Exdeath and Shinryu are pure hell tier for me and I too die tenth of time during Grand Cross Omega before I finally understood that it was barking than it was biting. In that regard, MNK focused and straighforward gameplay is much more simple to me than SCH scattered four layer of casting.

Oh, and you should try SCH opener. It last 15 sec and you have to fit 6 OGCD inside it, potion not included. It's super thigh and does land pretty good numbers when it's well done.
And somehow I did another wall of text.

[Ghishlain]

I feel part of the divide stems from the fact one faction is talking about Encounter Design and how a player interfaces with that encounter with their job and another is talking purely about Core Job Design without consideration for Encounter Design.

It goes without saying that when you compare kits some jobs have an easier time doing their core function than others and there are some complexities between roles. IE Healers can do their core job just by hitting Cure / Benefic / Physick on whomever is injured but melee DPS have to perform combos that have positional requirements and also have buff maintenance up time that is part of their core DPS kit.

Once you slot individual jobs into a specific encounter than those jobs have to start optimizing for those particular fights where players have to start considering fight mechanics and the "how" and "when" to use their cooldowns and abilities to maximize their output for the fight. Everyone has to do this. But this doesn't change the core knowledge each player has to have of their job, which is different from job to job and either simpler or more complex depending on the comparisons.

[MoroMurasaki]

I think it comes down to a hard cap/soft cap kind of thing. In terms of core function a healer has a hard cap of keeping everyone alive enough to beat enrage where as DPS are always chasing a higher number. To an extent (most) healers are as well, at this point we can probably comfortably say healer DPS is a thing, but the level of skill to perform optimal single-target healer DPS is so low (are your DoTs up? Are you nuking?) compared to a tank or DPS they aren't in the same galaxy.


This means that to adjust as a healer is intrinsically less on their DPS than adjusting for a DPS. Why do you think no healer has a gap closer or any movement abilities? WHM and SCH could certainly use them for Holy/Assize/Miasma II but because they aren't punished nearly as hard for disengaging it isn't an issue.

This is a necessity of the healer role in FFXIV, we have to be able to put down and pick up our DPS around healing the raid, but if Stone IV's potency started at 180 and increased by consecutive, uninterrupted casts (or some other still comparably easy mechanic) healers would at least begin to understand the turmoil a DPS faces when a boss goes untargetable, a status effect hits them or they happen to die. I don't want that, it would be terrible, but because we have this luxury to put out comparatively stronger DPS with less focus on it we do, by definition, have an easier time.

Lastly I would like to say even in reasonably easy content like EX primals or Omega normal a part of the healer's comfort is determined by their group. Are you in a competent, knowledgable static? The healer has a great time. Are you with inconsiderate, stupid pugs (not all pugs, I know) who eat every other bit of avoidable damage and don't perform basic mechanics? No one in that party is working harder than the healer.

[Vyriah]

It's not that. It's about the job trinity.

The job trinity in MMO isn't something about what kind of glamour you want (well, it is a bit, but not too much) it's about the idea that if on or two guy were to fight that huge dragon, they will die. But with the three here, there's precarious balance that if it holds together long enough then dragon will dies. The tank takes the hit, the healer heals the damage and the DPS kill the big bad monster. Healing too weak ? Tanks die, dragons kills every one. DPS is too weak ? No more ressources, dragon kills every one. But then, what about the tank ? He need to take less damage right ? But it's the healer job to keep him alive, so what's the right amount of less damage he have to take ?

I already said that a lot but I'll say it again : I come from TSW. And if you ask that to a TSW player, the answer is obvious. It have be able to survive a full healing cycle to get the strongest basic heal burst at the end of it. If the heal cycle is good but the tank is too squishy, then he dies and dragon kills everyone. If someone goes on a dungeon with DPS gear, then it's his fault for playing the hero, not the healer. Super specialised character was the way to go, unless you knew exactly what you were doing as a team.
What about FF XIV ? We don't care. Tank drop their damage reduction for more DPS. That's because there's no healing cycle, it's just super high burst that keep getting higher and higher not because of gear but because new skill get added. I wouldn't be surprised if healers could currently heal more that what absolutly all damage reduction skill could negate in less than 7,5 seconds. This may even be a pretty generous time window to do that. And that means that no matter how super huge damage you throw at the party, healers will eat like freshly baked cookies in matter of a second. Good healers will even try to not overdo it.

The trinty is unbalanced and as survavibility is less of an issue, it become obvious to ask for more DPS since the fight are still timed.
But why wouldn't healers also chase after the big number heals to begin with ? That increase effectiveness by potency is good no matter the situation as even in a DPS mindset stronger heals = less heals casted. So more DPS.

But this game as developped it's own ecosystem and it's getting harder and harder to adress it. And even worse : every thing done about the healers feels like no one really get what healing really is about. If there's people standing arround in dungeons, it's because if the lives of the party is hanging by the constant healing output the very healer spot could as much be a DPS off-heal spot. Again this could be by design, but then why reworking cleric stance into that meager buff ? Why remove the DPS skills while the useless slot no one used were the basic healing ones ? Why add news mechanic that center arround those same basic heal no one use ?
Why not tie-in DPS and healing into a gameplay when the former lead to the later or the other way arround ? Why not make them use the same ressource to further improve the whole decision making part of it ? Why not keep the whol idea of DPS vs healing stance, at leats as a class specific mechanic (this would even fit into AST night and day theme so damn well) ?

What Yoshi-P said about not touching the SCH despite player complain because it was still played about it felt extremly disheartning, I actually haven't touched SCH since then (and I'm not playing healer outside static). But in the end, I think there's a real need of an exterior look on how healer are doing right now, because their situation affect the game as whole.
Again, it's about the job trinity is supposed to create a frail but working balance between everything and because of that absurd healing output it's hard to design interesting fight as any damage is boudn the end up the void swiming in Neo's tears of getting solo healed. I'm sorry for those having fun with it, but Shinryu is certainly one of the most terrible fight in the whole game. It's mostly a giant dummy that just cheese wipe by being super confusing about what he is doing. It's a super unsane way of making an encounter and just serve as a way cheese player that will easily get caught by an AoE coming from a dead angle.

I'm not sure how this is coming in here as FF XIV community seem really attached to how the game works. But it's not very good actually. Not outright bad, but clearly a huge turn in a wrong direction. I really found that omega was a complete deadend where nothing really stand out, outside maybe O3S (wich was still really tame). When you come down to point of reducing max HP to be sure the healers have to heal between two raid damage and run at the same time shows how much you're just tripping the player to fail instead of creating interesting situations. It's even more frustrating that some 24 raid have a lot of good ideas.

Edit :
I writing that because I think that's the main problem, not searching wich healer is the person to blame. Maybe it's a bit too confusing ?
Sorry for sidetracking more, but I don't really have the heart to let that text go to waste.

Edit :
Oh, that's the wrong thread, what have I done.
Well, it's kind of irrelevant, but I spent two hour writing that, please bear with. I'll properly correct sentences that makes no sense to make up for it. "orz