Why not own this fixation on DPS?

[HyoMinPark]

It sees to be more or less accepted now that healers are expected to contribute to DPS as much as possible, and I bloody hate that - it's one of the reasons why I stopped playing healers.
However, the reason why I hate it is that healer DPS comes down to "put DoTs up, then spam one button until your DoTs need refreshing"

This got me thinking; since the game's design prioritizes DPS so much, even from tanks and healers, why not take this one step further?
Instead of having healers' healing toolkit be completely divorced from their DPS spells, and their DPS options being as boring as can be, why not combine the two?

I.e. give healers more involved, more interesting DPS skills and have those skills confer healing bonuses and effects. Make it so that maxing your DPS also maximizes your healing output.

Honestly, the healing bonuses would be pointless, because there’s simply not enough outgoing damage present in this game to warrant more healing.

Healers focus so much on dealing damage because they don’t have to heal—as in, the content doesn’t call for excess amounts of it. All healing is scripted in this game—you can map out your healing to just oGCDs in even high-end content if you have a party willing to communicate for it. Even in Ultimate, healers spend maybe 50% of their time actively healing damage. The other half is spent DPSing. I’ve been progging UCoB the last couple days on AST. Most of the healing for Twintania and Nael is done through the occasional Aspected Helios for HoTs, an Aspected Benefic on the tank sometimes for a regen, and the rest is Earthly Star/Collective Unconscious/Essential Dignity/Lady of Crowns healing for me while I cast Malefic III and do card stuff. I know Bahamut calls for more healing, but the first 6 or so minutes I feel like I DPS more than I have to actively heal.

If the developers want a higher focus on healing, they need to make things actually require it. But considering how this playerbase seems to struggle even with MSQ solo instances, that’s unlikely to ever happen.

[Greven]

snippy

Well, it was just an idea, I didn't go into details and as I said everything can be balanced.

A DPS healer doesn't have to do more damage than the others, it doesn't have to rely only on damage to be able to heal and can have other gimmicks as well.

To make some examples: it could load its gauge by doing offensive skills and that gauge would be used for special skills while having its basic healing set like all the other healers. It could just have a sort of HoT attached to damage or even be about stances that active passive healings for some limited time depending on the combo.

I'm pretty sure that if SCH was presented as healer with AI healing pet someone would've thought it OP or useless at the time.

Furthermore having a DPS healer doesn't exclude adding the kind of conjunction you propose--which I like- between damage skills and healing skills as well.

Ultimately I think adding more diversity and specialisation to healers, breaking the duality big heal Vs shields, is the solution to the stagnant situation we are having with the healing role.

Tl;dr: Open your mind

[Maltothoris]

Nael also kinda depends on rng like if quotes 4,5 and 6 all get theromic beam following into bahamut phase transtion but again for the same measure, it could be meteor stream, lunar into chariot, and dive into lunar etc. Also the healing potency buff from Largesse isn't for the extra healing but for lb cheesing with shields given how LB generation in this game works with shields. The Korean speedruns of Uwu show that peculiar strength.

[Flatopia]

Well, it was just an idea, I didn't go into details and as I said everything can be balanced.

A DPS healer doesn't have to do more damage than the others, it doesn't have to rely only on damage to be able to heal and can have other gimmicks as well.

To make some examples: it could load its gauge by doing offensive skills and that gauge would be used for special skills while having its basic healing set like all the other healers. It could just have a sort of HoT attached to damage or even be about stances that active passive healings for some limited time depending on the combo.

I'm pretty sure that if SCH was presented as healer with AI healing pet someone would've thought it OP or useless at the time.

Furthermore having a DPS healer doesn't exclude adding the kind of conjunction you propose--which I like- between damage skills and healing skills as well.

Ultimately I think adding more diversity and specialisation to healers, breaking the duality big heal Vs shields, is the solution to the stagnant situation we are having with the healing role.

Tl;dr: Open your mind

That's what I'm sayin', the idea for a job centered around doing heals via damage would be not that possible if that was it's only concept, but doing dps allowing you to heal more optimally would be great for parts of a healer.
and it's not that the idea of the loop of dps>heals that are op, it's that doing their optimal dps=doing optimal healing. I'm totally for diversity in the healing role, but it's just that when you make a job that just removes the balancing act of dps and heals just goes against the idea of the game.

tldr; making it the sole identity of a job wouldn't really work, but making it some of the parts to a job would be great.

[Big-Isaac]

Having a single job that heals through damage wouldn't work in this game at all.
If it produces as much healing as the other healers but more damage, then it makes the other healers obsolete
If it produces less healing than the other healers, then it becomes useless on fights where that healing is needed. This latter outcome is less likely since damage taken in this game is generally too low, but it'd be a balancing nightmare either way.

However, if every healing job follows this healing through damage model, then this issue disappears.

[Valdima]

While i typically only get to dpsing if the tank or someone else isn't burning alive, I do think I'd appreciate more damage skills. maybe give ast a pre-50+ aoe? please?

[JunseiKei]

S'what I had proposed for a dancer as a healer, making it similar to Forsaken World's light-specced bard. Bards in that game string together chords to make songs. These songs do different things depending on which 3 you play: light bards mainly played off "E" chords, but you had "C" and "D" chords as well. A song with the chords of "CDD" in any order (DDC, DCD, CDD) would trigger an attack buff to you and your allies.

The class and build were very viable - being the strongest AoE healers within that game. However, it took knowing the rotations very well and knowing where you could compensate didn't make light bards all that popular. Especially with a priest being easier to play, despite light bards having the only combat resurrection. It lacked single target healing (outside self) and they needed a target to trigger their skills to make songs in most cases (higher leveled ones got an AoE heal that had its cooldown reduced massively if they were light). Also, Water and Wind bards were OP in other respects (a nigh indestructible shield that gave MP back every time it suffered any type of damage and extremely potent AoE attack buff combined with tripled movement speed respectively).

I'm pretty sure something like that could absolutely work in XIV, especially coming from a game where there was a lot more out going damage and most things not being scripted. Balancing it to XIV to not out shine the other healers, or be made to appear so under-powered (like AST initially and WHM currently) would be the biggest and most consistent hurdles.

[BiffWellington]

Healers are expected to DPS because they have a fair bit of downtime when healing is not needed. DPS and tanks don't really have any downtime during a fight, and they just want to feel like you're working as hard as they are to clear the content.

[HyoMinPark]

Nael also kinda depends on rng like if quotes 4,5 and 6 all get theromic beam following into bahamut phase transtion but again for the same measure, it could be meteor stream, lunar into chariot, and dive into lunar etc. Also the healing potency buff from Largesse isn't for the extra healing but for lb cheesing with shields given how LB generation in this game works with shields. The Korean speedruns of Uwu show that peculiar strength.

Even when we had pulls with a lot Thermo, I’m still DPSing more than I’m actively healing—especially when my co-healer and I alternate oGCD heals (Earthly Star/Indom).

The group I cleared UwU with aren’t what I would call “hardcore” raiders. I’d say they’re fairly decent players, but definitely not on the level of the top-tier raiders. And the healers in there only cast healing spells 50% of the time. The rest was spent DPSing. If the hardest pieces of content in the game don’t call for 50% healing uptime (some of the best healers have optimized enough to narrow that down to ~30% of their casts are healing spells/abilities), nothing else in this game will call for anything higher.


As for Largesse, not sure if this is in response to me, because I’m not talking about Largesse. I’m talking about the OP’s idea that DPS spells give “bonuses” on their healing spells. Unless you’re into the LB cheesing—which, let’s face it, that’s a very small portion of the already small hardcore community—any bonuses that deal with additional healing potency will be completely wasted because this game simply doesn’t call for a lot of healing. The tools healers have already are completely broken/OP.

[manamoppet]

There's nothing much I can say that hasn't been said earlier in the thread, but I just wanted to add that in a DRK job quest there's a healer that does damage by using the Cure spell.