Idea to fix controversy about healer dps.

[Ghishlain]

-snip-

I agree with a healer redesign from a kit perspective, but they do have to be careful about how much they nerf the healer / tank kits. If they nerf it too hard then then we will run into necessitating gear before being able to clear content that would lead to 3-4 week clears that we saw in Gordias and Midas. I know not everyone will think that's bad but at the same time there those two raid cycles nearly buried the raiding scene six feet under as well.

I also feel the difficulty of the healer checks revolve around how mechanics are made too for Savage tier content. A failed mechanic is either a wipe / death, so there's nothing to "heal" per say. We either heal that raid buster or pick that person up off the ground with few things in between usually. More Prey type mechanics and more frequent tank buster mechanics (even shared to put emphasis on the myriad of mitigation tools available to a raid) would help out with that. Reverting MP tools to how they were in 3.X would also increase the challenge of resource management.

I wouldn't mind a higher healing check - I am generally an easy person to please in terms of content so if they kept content as it is or start tweaking to frequency of unavoidable damage, I'd find a way to work around it and enjoy myself. I'm one of those types of players who believe that a healer's primary function is maintaining party health but at the same time I understand that's an extremely low bar too if all a healer does is push green-healy buttons because that's how it feels healer's were design - huge heals at the press of a singular button. I've always felt healer's were designed to be "easy" in XIV as a means to encourage more casual players to try it out but that then leads to high-tier healers being bored out of their mind if they aren't using their DPS abilities.

Hopefully we see a change in content and healer design in 5.X to actually make raid healing more challenging from a "healer" perspective.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I also feel the difficulty of the healer checks revolve around how mechanics are made too for Savage tier content. A failed mechanic is either a wipe / death, so there's nothing to "heal" per say.

This stems from what Tridus eluded to. The developers have essentially backed themselves into a corner since the only threatening mechanics is things which will kill you outright or come incredibly close. Even God Kefka's aoe damage isn't the frightening aspect. It's the fact he reduces you to 1HP then spams raid wide aoes. Likewise, both he and Exdeath used gimmicks that require everyone to be at 100%, thereby forcing more healing. If healers couldn't bring you from 1 to 70,000 in seconds, you could have less OHKO mechanics as damage would be threatening again.

[Godofhealing]

I like this idea for another healer maybe a healer that heals through damage yeah a battle healer wow im a Genius.

[Saefinn]

My experience with this problem and I suspect is the case for others.

I heal and DPS, people moan.
I heal and don't DPS, people moan.

But I can your logic,thinking back to when I started playing it out on 2.0, I thought of the DPS moves being helpful in mitigating damage, as it what SCH does. Shadowflare = slow, Miasma = less healing taken + slow move, Ruin II = blind etc. They weren't that potent, but I thought a good idea for keeping damage mitigated and in turn, creating damage. It is something I hoped would get developed into the role as I think of SCH as a damage mitigater and weakening your enemies seems a sensible way of mitigating.

But I don't think it is just a lack of incentive (and I don't think people would be incentivise by it), there are the two types of mentality to deal with ("healers are support only" and "always be casting"), apathy, confidence, experience and groups that make their healer "work for it" and no doubt other points.

[Tint]

this will fix nothing, the gap between dpsing healers and non dpsing healers will just widen.

people just don't want to dps, they choose to play healer to get a different experience. a experience wich isn't centered around dps. sadly, the game design, the healer design, doesn't allow this.

i have thought about this issue too and my idea is the implementation of a new healer job, wich isn't centered around doing damage. so it can only heal and has party buffs for the meantime (yeah i know we have AST already).
of course this healer would have huge issues when solo'ing and to compete with other healers for a spot. that's why this new healer job will have a pet - a dps pet!
see? problem solved. the healer don't have to dps and gets the heal only experience he is searching for, and the party don' have to carry a dead weight, since the pet is contributing for the missed healer dps. \^^/

[S0laire]

What more can you expect the devs to do to incentivize your average healer to throw more damage spells? All the risk of doing damage was eliminated once the removal of old cleric stance.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if someone pitched the idea that all regular healing spells do damage as well, as a poor man's Assize.

[Alrin]

Instead of giving buffs through damage spells i would like to see short time debuff spells introduced to healers. You dont need to heal? Throw some debuffs at them.

[Kurando]

Have no real issue with healers that DPS as long as they keep people alive and know what the priorities are, but I will humour the idea of what OP suggested.

How about there being a new cross role action (or tweak Cleric Stance), that allows healers to heal a very small amount to allies nearby the enemy they have attacked with an offensive spell. So you use Stone IV on Cactuar, and the residual energy of this disperses to the nearby tank restoring their HP. In order to avoid it being OP, the amount would be really small like 1-2% of damage is turned in to HP and the CD is around 120secs. It would also only work on impact so dots wouldn't be effected, you could still use Aero and the impact damage would heal but the ongoing dot wouldn't.

[KisaiTenshi]

Well some say so, some say otherwise. Its propabily save to say its intended but not necessary for a healer to use his/her damage spells.

The issue is that as the content ages, healing becomes less demanding, thus the ability to DPS "for free" goes from "if I can" to "well nothing else I can do, so why not"

If there are two healers and two tanks in an instance, then the off-tank tends to switch to DPS unless the content is demanding enough to swap, but with a healer, the entire purpose of the second healer tends to be "revive the first healer if they 1hit-ko'd, else DPS" not "take over when the first healer runs out of MP" . We are still seeing situations in older content where both healers decide they should be trying to help DPS, and letting the tank die in the process. Likewise, situations where you get either two AST's, or one AST and one SCH and both of them keep overwriting each others shields, they're not paying attention.

Any time you encounter content where the boss essentially does nothing for 15 seconds, the healer has nothing to do, since casting any healing during this does nothing. There needs to be a reverse situation where only the healer paying attention can save the party, or the party wipes 100% of the time. There are some mechanics like this already, (where everyone has to stack) but the stakes need to be higher where you have to actually reflect the incoming damage, not absorb it.

If SE wants to add another type of character to the game, the should consider adding one that implicitly acts like a healer/tank as opposed to the red mage of dps/healer-capable. Basically a shield/deflection setup, where what kind of damage they can reflect or absorb is dependent on the shield mode (eg physical, magical) as a skill or barrier cast. eg "reflect physical attacks, absorb magical attacks" , "absorb physical attacks, reflect magical attacks", or "absorb physical and magical attacks", where in the DPS is a consequence of the shield mode's reflection.

eg:
Physical+Magical barrier, Absorbs 5% of incoming magical and physical damage, does not return it to target
Physical barrier, Absorbs 10% of incoming physical damage, and returns it to target (as a number, not a %), caps at players maximum HP
Magical barrier, Absorbs 10% of incoming magical damage, and returns it to target (as a number, not a %), caps at players maximum HP
Reflect only, Absorbs 0% of incoming magical and physical damage, reflects 15% (as a number, not a %) back to target, caps at players maximum HP

The barrier would follow the healer character (like a movable "Collective Unconscious" ), and lasts 18 secs or until any other non-shield action is cast, and then needs to be recast. Thus the healer has to be close to the action. Cancels effects of any other HoT shields cast by other players while players are inside the shield and takes precedence over other shields except Paladin's Passage of Arms .

Then you have "+ convert incoming damage to MP", "+convert incoming damage to HP", and "+convert incoming damage to TP" as a single overwriteable DoT which gives an effect closer to Assize on every tick.

Anyway, that's just a back-of-the-envelope idea. I'll be really disappointed if they add another tank or healer, and it's effectively just a re-skinned skillset of another job again. Because for the most part, AST started out with it's own unique bits, but as of SB, it's basically plays almost exactly the same as WHM until level 50 when you can then switch to Nocturnal sect. The cards are RNG, so you can't depend on them, they're just a bonus if you can manage to use them.

[VanilleFang]

the entire purpose of the second healer tends to be "revive the first healer if they 1hit-ko'd, else DPS" not "take over when the first healer runs out of MP" . We are still seeing situations in older content where both healers decide they should be trying to help DPS, and letting the tank die in the process.

There is no such thing as a "main" healer or an "off" healer. Every healer has something to bring to different situations. If you think that the second healer should just DPS until they need to raise the other healer then I never want to play with you. Why wouldn't you just have a RDM or SMN if that was the case? Both healers should be dpsing and healing as much as needed. If the SCH casts Succor before an AoE the WHM might be able to get away with just using Assize to bring everyone to full. Or if the WHM is precasting Medica II the AST could just refrain from using any healing. Even if we're talking purely low level content (like Titan HM for example) both healers can heal different mechanics more effectively than the other. No healer should be relegated to 5th DPS.

Any healer who focuses solely on dpsing is a bad healer.