What if DNC is SHOMHOW a DPS?

[loreleidiangelo]

There's only so many ways to make "wave your hands, restore numbers" interesting. Meanwhile, there's countless ways to represent swinging a weapon and subtracting numbers. Or shooting and subtracting numbers. It's not some sort of favoritism. It's just straight up harder to make healers diverse.

This is just...untrue, tbh. World of Warcraft, Wildstar, SWTOR, TERA...just the surface of games I could list that had pretty interesting, varied healer design. Just because XIV copy-pastes the same 300-600 potency heals on all its healers doesn't mean that's the only way it can be done.

[NorthernLadMSP]

This is just...untrue, tbh. World of Warcraft, Wildstar, SWTOR, TERA...just the surface of games I could list that had pretty interesting, varied healer design. Just because XIV copy-pastes the same 300-600 potency heals on all its healers doesn't mean that's the only way it can be done.

DCUO also has wildly varying healing styles that make each style incredibly unique and fun.

[loreleidiangelo]

DCUO also has wildly varying healing styles that make each style incredibly unique and fun.

So did Dark Age of Camelot, though that was arguably because of a variety of things like the build/skill system as well as the heavy PVP focus of the game allowing more niche support-esque classes and CC bots like Theurgist/Minstrel to be a thing.

DAOC is a bit of an oldie though, and I thought keeping my examples restricted to newer games might help readers relate better. I mean, I'll be honest, even in TERA their healers DPS a ton, but a lot of it either comes with pretty high risk (Shocking Implosion into Fiery Backstep on Priest for instance, Metamorphic Smite on both healers), high opportunity cost (Mystic's Thrall of Wrath being a TEN-MINUTE COOLDOWN that deals massive damage), or applies a valuable buff/debuff component that still makes you "feel" like a supporting/healing player even though you're hitting the boss (Corruption Ring on Mystic sucks HP from nearby enemies which then gets converted to positive MP for your party, and Energy Stars gives your party a crit buff and attack speed buff whenever it hits an enemy). I think there's absolutely ideas Square can borrow or take inspiration from when it comes to making healer gameplay in XIV feel better and more rewarding, without being a direct copy of those games or turning us into the dreaded "healbots" (even though I think that term is extremely specious and should die in a fire). The problem is that they seem afraid to branch out and both a.) make healers possible to fail at in this game outside of dying to mechanics, and b.) deconstruct every healer's kit a bit so that they're not good at everything and have actual strengths and weaknesses outside of "herp derp do I buff rDPS".

[Vaer]

I kinda thought that maybe they were hinting at AST getting some of the geomancer abilities this coming expansion since they seem to be sort of related. AST being the sky/stars and GEO being the land/earth. We'll see though.

I think there's absolutely ideas Square can borrow or take inspiration from when it comes to making healer gameplay in XIV feel better and more rewarding, without being a direct copy of those games or turning us into the dreaded "healbots" .

Yeah recently the photon/white hole/everything is on fire for a bit then nothing for a while is kinda bland.

One of the most fun times I've had healing in this game was in a4s. The big Jagd doll that uses Wirbelwind. It cuts everyone's MP to near nil. Admittedly it was supposed to function as sort of a soft enrage, but people kinda just let it go off since you could use that dps time to hit the boss instead and the add just kinda kills itself.

Those 10 or so seconds where you had almost no resources and having to actually think and decide who to heal with the limited resources was kinda fun. Having to prep for it so you could keep the party afloat during it when you bottomed out is more engaging to me instead of just smashing 2 buttons and everyone is full HP then going back to DPS.

Honestly I think I've had more trouble healing wow leveling dungeons on expansion release than current savage fights. Savage fights for me just mostly end up as an equation of how little healing/how much risk do I want to take to increase the amount of DPS I can do without causing a wipe. Since I have a more cautious gameplay style that is really boring and unrewarding to me.

[loreleidiangelo]

Honestly I think I've had more trouble healing wow leveling dungeons on expansion release than current savage fights. Savage fights for me just mostly end up as an equation of how little healing/how much risk do I want to take to increase the amount of DPS I can do without causing a wipe. Since I have a more cautious gameplay style that is really boring and unrewarding to me.

I just finished up the 4 base Mythic dungeons weekly on my Mistweaver Monk and I had tons of fun, even though I got some real winners in my Atal'dazar and we wiped twice (Demon Hunters...lol). I didn't feel like a "healbot", I didn't feel like I was playing "health bar whack-a-mole" or whatever disparaging stuff people want to come up with when they want to slam others for wanting XIV to have more actual healing requirements in the game. I felt like I was just enjoying playing my class, popping out as many Renewing Mists as I could for that sweet Vivify cleave and Rising Sun Kicking things in the butt in the few seconds of downtime I had. I still DPS'd, I didn't just stand around overhealing for the lulz because nobody accuses you of being lazy for "just healing" as a WoW healer. Frankly, I just enjoyed...using my entire toolkit, which is something I feel like I no longer do as much as a healer in this game.

As I said, playing casually does mean that if DNC comes out and is a healer, I'll get to just level it and enjoy it and not care about whether or not it's "meta" like I might have had to worry about if I was still raiding, but...I'm still sort of dreading it having the same copy-paste catch-all healer toolkit that SCH/WHM/AST all have. Playing healers in other MMOs just reminds me of how similar all three healers here feel.