Why not own this fixation on DPS?

[Hustensaft]

Honestly if they really want this situation to change, they're gonna have to Nerf healing CDs in general. The reason why we can get away with almost never hardcasting a heal and DPSing for 90% of a battle is because we have too many OGCDs and they're all so powerful they practically heal everyone to full.
Back in ARR, you had one for each healer. Benediction for WHM and Lustrate for SCH. That's all.
Now we have 3-4 per healer that are all extremely powerful and on relatively low CDs.
They really just need to dial back how much we can heal instantly at the press of a button, that way we'd actually have to cast heals and that will naturally make us DPS less.

Of course, that's not going to happen. So at the very least I do hope that healer rotations improve. So far it's only been getting easier which makes healer very boring to play at times.

It's not an oGCD problem. It's a problem with healing requirements. If your total output of both healers is 200%, you currently need about 50% to heal any encounter. In the grand scheme of things, oGCD aren't that much of a healers maximum output. If you only 25% of a healers output, and said 25% are the oGCD, you'll obviously use oGCD. If you look at some of omega logs: SCH will use 2.2 oGCD heals per minute on average, and the AST partner will press 1.75 oGCd heals per minute. How can you even say that oGCD healing is a problem here, if you use 2 per minute on average?

There is too little damage to heal overall, and whatever damage is to heal happens so rarely, that the oGCD cooldowns just sync up perfectly with it. Sure, you could nerf their output, but aside of pressing a single AoE more every 30 seconds to a minute, that's not going to change all that much.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

There is too little damage to heal overall to

I don't disagree with you at all. It's very true that there is simply too little damage overall in raids. It's also way too predictable as well.
The thing is, I don't ever see SE increasing the general difficulty of healing, simply because it would make things too hard for the casual side.

[Dzian]

Honestly the easiest fix to this is to just make more fights put out more damage. When you can spend anywhere from 40-70% uptime DPSing without the tank or anyone slipping below 50% health, of course DPs is going to be prioritized. If only because you get bored and are just sitting there twiddling your thumbs.

If people want healing to be a priority, rather than make complicated systems they just need to encourage the dev's to make more mechanics that hit harder.

That's part of the problem but the biggest part is actually the predictability of damage.

Encounters are so tightly scripted and highly predictable that damage can be anticipated to the exact second. and thus it's a joke to heal.

One of the reasons people say sch is op isn't because of its fairy. I mean ok sure it helps. But its lustrate/indomnibility that are generally considered OP.

A scholar can hit Aetherflow and due to scripted and predictable fights know exactly how many stacks he's going to need for heals in the next 45 seconds and exactly when they'll need them. The result is they then know exactly how many stacks they can turn into dps instead of heals and never need to actually cast a healing spell..

Astrologian is largely the same with many of its heals. Where they can literally time early dominance to pop a second after a raid wide attack goes out. and a similar thing with ED and even aspected benefic to a slightly lesser degree. The tanks won't take any real damage for at least 45 seconds The regen effect is more than enough to fully heal them..

If you want healers to heal more and dps less. Simply make encounters less predictable and less scripted... Bam that tank got smacked and I have no idea when he'll get hit again.. Best actually cast something...

honestly the highly predictable and scripted nature of encounter is what causes many of the games problems not just healers. tanks would use tank stance more if they weren't sure when or how often they were going to get smacked around.. but when its as predictable as it is. its like oh ill get smacked in 5 seconds pop rampart. there we go job done for the next minute...

even dps to some degree. blms popping triple cast for a minor dps increase because fights are so predictable they know they wont have to move much in the next 60 seconds or something like that..

[Irenia]

I've listened to some folk who like the predictableness of encounters due to the fact that luck is minimized - but perhaps making healing interesting is incompatible with this.

An idea I just had now involves pairing up mechanics with damage... Say a boss does four mechanics in the first minute or so of the fight. Some of them involve taking damage, but none are a simple tankbuster or the like. Instead, each is paired up with some sort of unavoidable damage. One gets a tankbuster. One gets a raidwide AoE. One damages three random non MTs. And one gets no damage. Tweak the values to make risky play dangerous, and that might be a neat first Savage boss.

As for easier content, you can do some randomness, especially for extreme content, but I don't think too much will be done with dungeons.

[Kuurei]

Honestly, this line of discussion has me thinking back to my Everquest days, and how encounters were actually far less predictable back then. Especially since you could never fully account for the battlefield itself due to wanderers, patrols, and glitched walls that let mobs aggro through them. Healing classes, especially Druid and Shaman since they had additional roles, had to hold onto their mana for dear life because you never knew when the tank was going to end up needing a top off. Damage also occurred much less consistently throughout fights, and in the worst cases multiple large hits could all happen at once.

I think the difference now is that many encounters are far more consistent, mostly auto-attack damage at low amounts until a skill/spell is used, then the damage becomes much higher over a short period in which our current heals are more than enough to fend off without any worry nor sacrifice of DPS.

[Maeka]

Honestly the easiest fix to this is to just make more fights put out more damage. When you can spend anywhere from 40-70% uptime DPSing without the tank or anyone slipping below 50% health, of course DPs is going to be prioritized. If only because you get bored and are just sitting there twiddling your thumbs.

If people want healing to be a priority, rather than make complicated systems they just need to encourage the dev's to make more mechanics that hit harder.

No bloody thanks, I don't want WoW in FFXIV.

I refuse to heal in WoW and there's a reason for that. I don't like having to spam heals as fast as the game will let me cast them, and if I stop for a second, someone dies almost instantly.