Why not own this fixation on DPS?

[Aurelius2625]

Mean... you can only HEAL so much before it's totally worthless and a waste of mana. I get it, you wanna be one of those lazy healers that does nothing in a dungeon or normal mode raid, that would get destroyed in savage and ultimate. No problem. But the thing is, if we keep things the way they are NOW, then the dpsing healers get to keep doing their fun thing, and you can choose NOT to dps. But, if we get rid of dps options for healers, then they LOSE something, while you still can do nothing. That's not fair.

It's like tanking: There's only SO much mitigation and aggro you can gain before it's diminishing returns. Then what? What are you supposed to do? Do nothing?

[Squig]

I don't mean to be rude but if what you want as a healer is to be trying to pump out as much HPS as possible, go play WoW. FFXIV's healer design (and this won't change with whatever healing overhaul 5.0 brings) is about taking breaks from doing damage to cast healing spells, ideally not having to stop DPS at all. Only healing and just idling between Cure/Physick/Benefic casts, even if you're keeping your tank(s) alive, is playing the job *far* below even 50% job proficiency. Assuming your tank isn't literally wearing paper towels for armor in Ghimlyt Dark, there are no encounters in the game designed for healers to be putting all their GCDs into healing.

I agree that WHM's "Stone IV -> Stone IV -> Stone IV -> Stone IV -> Stone IV" rotation gets a little bit tedious by the point in the game where enrage timers are a factor, yes, but I fear that further complicating healer DPS would just give people more reason to think healer DPS is just a tryhard Ultimate-level optimization. As a WAR player, I can tell you that I've gotten sick of my DPS rotations being interrupted by overlong boss phase change gimmicks and it's made me almost not want to play tank at all. As a healer, that would hurt even more in the form of having to actually heal occasionally.

I don't think that the kind of changes they're making to healers with 5.0 will have DPS skill ceiling in their scope. It'd need a pretty big dynamic shift to make that feasible.

[FoxyAreku]

A DPS rotation that heals is something WoW did before. It was disgustingly OP. That's probably why they won't do it here.

[mooferz]

Personally, instead of trying to make healers heal or DPS more, I think they should bring in more low cooldown buffs and debuffs to weave alongside our usual DoTs and oGCDs. While I am a little sick of being just green DPS, having more support abilities can still keep us busy aside from just mashing stones and healing every once in a while.

[Lynesse]

Personally, instead of trying to make healers heal or DPS more, I think they should bring in more low cooldown buffs and debuffs to weave alongside our usual DoTs and oGCDs. While I am a little sick of being just green DPS, having more support abilities can still keep us busy aside from just mashing stones and healing every once in a while.

Yes! Hire this man!

Buffs and debuffs instead of DPSing so much.

I love stunning enemies and using Celestial Opposition to extend card buffs and such.

The more I get to positively and directly affect my teammates, the more fun I have, and the more demonstrable my effect on the party.

[Jollyy5]

I do feel they could at least make current healer DPS options more interesting, such as allowing Stone spells have a chance to grant lilies, combine Sacred Soil and Shadow Flare into Sacred Flare for a ground AoE that also provides damage reduction for allies, maybe give AST another DoT or have Combust drain small amount of mana from the enemy per tick, etc...

[Icy_Auron]

EVERYONE is expected to contribute to damage as much as possible. That's fairly true for most games, not just this. If there was so much healing that needed to be done that you were casting healing and/or defensive spells the ENTIRE battle, that would mean that so much damage was incoming that there wouldn't be much room for mistakes.

[Atlantasia]

I've played healers in several MMO's and they all DPS to some extent, it's just to a much lesser extent typically and there was only two options so there was always the Main Healer and the Off Healer roles. Personally? I like optimizing my DPS in raid content, etc. I like that I don't have to spend forever healing people, it's a welcome change from the previous MMO's I've played. That being said, the balance in this game is entirely off when it comes to healers and that part completely sucks, especially since my main is the benched healer and has been since HW.

The last time I had a fight where I needed to heal the majority of the time or face the possibility of a wipe was in T13, but it wasn't because I couldn't DPS at all, it was because if I took too much MP to DPS then I'd have none to heal up the gobs of damage being done at certain parts of the fight. So there was a balance to be had which is no longer the case.

With scripted fights, the introduction of AST and the change in raids + bigger MP pools and more MP restore, DPS is on the rise naturally. Back in the day when T10-13 were relevant, the optimal stats were Determination and Piety. xD How far things have changed! lol

[Kuurei]

EVERYONE is expected to contribute to damage as much as possible. That's fairly true for most games, not just this. If there was so much healing that needed to be done that you were casting healing and/or defensive spells the ENTIRE battle, that would mean that so much damage was incoming that there wouldn't be much room for mistakes.

Yes, like Everquest and pre-Cata WoW where doing DPS would run your poor healers dry for this very reason. Damage in older games, when done at-level, generally results in more required healing output and less room for mistakes.

I almost miss that for a bit. But then I queue for Alpha/Sigmascape and remember why I actually don't lol.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

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.