The Healer Double Standard

[Ilenya]

I agree 100% I just keep seeing people acting like healer DPS is getting removed when actually it's being improved number wise.

Of course the flat numbers are being improved in some way, because can you imagine how bad it would be if they didn't give us our new Broil 3/Malefic 4/Stone 5*cough*I mean Glare?

[Huntrss]

Yoshida really doesn't understand there are ways around being a DPS Healer besides cutting Dps down and making Pure Healers out of them. As long as there is only World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 there is no reason to think outside the Box on what A healer is. An Example you lay down a Cone and it heals the group it's feature is Sound and just as long as the group is in the Cone... what is the Healer doing to the Mob besides sitting there and watching it be attack this is how he thinks. Another Developer what if I put a Damage effect on that Cone So it's hurting the Mob while it's Healing the Group. He wanted White Mages with Holy that Dps the mob but then he made another spell that heals the group why because he doesn't want a Double effect but he wants pure-Healers??? so why not double effect Holy make it so you Dps the Mob while healing your group. I know some Spells can't do this but Some can. which in his mind should be I made a pure Healer + in the players Mind I can Dps without worrying about my group since I'm also healing them. It gives the healers the ability to be Pure-Healers while Dps since that is what they should be and it's better then the idea of taking all Dps spells away from healers. (Since the idea is you should be Healing).

[dezzmont]

The changes to mana and piety are almost certainly there to make it so that healing in FFXIV more resembles other MMOs. In FFXIV healers have some limited heal resources (Essential Dignity has a cooldown, aetherflow has 3 stacks per minute, ect), but for the most part you can constantly heal. Like I tested it on scholar and you can toss out AOE heals non-stop 33 times and your expensive heal 22 times, which is... a bonkers amount of healing before running out of MP and having to slightly slow down healing, even ignoring oGCDs and the fairy.

Healing in most MMOs is an on the fly resource management game, and while it may not be to everyone's taste, the 'mainstream' healer demographic is a very important one FFXIV doesn't cater to at all, and that is a pretty big problem. "Do I regen this DPS who took incidental damage, do an efficient burst heal, toss out a mana chugging AOE heal?" is an interesting questions in those games because going too light might result in their death, going too hard means you run out of mana faster and may be left without healing when you need it. That... can't happen in FFXIV, so the only real skillful play is knowing when you need to heal at all, knowing when you can stand still as a white mage, and knowing how to weave energy drain if you are a scholar. Not... a lot going on, which is why healers going from other MMOs don't often heal in FFXIV. Ironically, because healers are so insane at healing to the point you can always toss your biggest GCD heals whenever you want, they actually are less interesting than when they have mana problems. So I can fully see why there is a double standard and why healers won't be able to meld piety to make their mana efficiency better: Because healers being very mana efficient actually makes healers LESS fun to play.

Course there are other considerations: other games have healer 'downtime' where they can catch their bearings and monitor the team, and while FFXIV has plenty of downtime too usually you spent that DPSing, so hopefully healer DPS abilities won't cost mana. Likewise, while potency adjustments were necessary, as well as nerfs to scholar, it is sub-par an enjoyable part of the scholar kit of oGCD offensive weaving is going away. Those are some weird changes and will leave a hole in the game if healing doesn't get a lot more active, and more active healing means more folks wiping in roulette content, and roulette content being a more serious barrier to progression is bad with how long it takes now to get to endgame.

[Ilenya]

Course there are other considerations: other games have healer 'downtime' where they can catch their bearings and monitor the team, and while FFXIV has plenty of downtime too usually you spent that DPSing, so hopefully healer DPS abilities won't cost mana.

Too late. At the very least the AoEs cost MP.

[xxvaynxx]

Maybe Because I'm not a healer but like... All you had was just two dots and one spamable attack. Sch had like 4 I think? I don't really see the big deal, all you lost was one extra dot.
You still going to be spamming one skill.
Sch had energy drain but like that's not much.

[MizArai]

Maybe Because I'm not a healer but like... All you had was just two dots and one spamable attack. Sch had like 4 I think? I don't really see the big deal, all you lost was one extra dot.
You still going to be spamming one skill.
Sch had energy drain but like that's not much.

AST didn't lose any dots. WHM lost one dot. SCH lost too much.

AST is mad because cards are being dumbed down to the point where it feels like their identity is being taken away. (If you actually paid attention in the AST quest line, it talks about what the cards reference and why they do what they do, someone made a great post about it somewhere in the dumpster fire that is healer forums over the past week. I will not be going to find it.)

WHM is mad because we got 1 dot taken away so we now have the boring AST rotation but without anything else for us to do. And we still don't have any raid utility at all. And all of our over the top healing (of which we got more) isn't needed and still won't be needed.

SCH is mad because they lost too much (way more than one dot), and while they got a new shiny fairy, it does not fix losing too much.


To whoever it was trying to talk about how we're gaining 10% potency...
And of course healers have bigger potency spells so it's probable that at least AST and WHM will do more dmg than we currently do, but the HP for all the mobs will also go up quite a bit if Shadowbringers is like previous expansions. My undergeared WHM couldn't really kill anything in HW launch (even though I could kill 50s in ARR areas ok). My well geared WHM took much too long to kill things in Fringes and Peaks (even though I had no problems with 60s in the HW areas). I expect this to be much the same in Shadowbringers, and I for one would have loved to be able to keep any extra damage spells to be able to help kill things faster. (And that's why I'll be going DPS this expansion.)

[Nujana]

100% agree OP.

At this point, I honestly dont' believe SE has an idea how to properly do anything but DPS roles. That is why tanks are officially blue DPS now...

What I would do is, scrap the whole concept of the healer role and replace it with the support role. The support role could be anything from a melee, to physical ranged or caster and would be a DPS/heal hybrid. DNC would perfectly fit that role already (with a few tweaks).

This has two big pros:
1. You can give the support role a full DPS rotation,which either buffs the group or debuffs enemies and give them 2-3 heals.
2. You can make tanks have an identity besides "blue DPS"!
Make them be responsible for their own survivability, f.e. by giving them active mitigation they have to keep track of while tanking and give them the tools to keep themselves alive.
The group dmgreduce CD also already fits into that concept.

This is what they could do:
SCH
Debuffs enemies.
Gives out heals/small shields through the fairy (on a CD).

AST
The SCH/WHM hybrid.
Rework the card system to either hand out buffs or debuff enemies (diurnal/nocturnal).
Make each card unique again!
Draws could be achieved by completing their DPS rotation.

WHM
Buffs the group with white magic.

[Saefinn]

100% agree OP.

At this point, I honestly dont' believe SE has an idea how to properly do anything but DPS roles. That is why tanks are officially blue DPS now...

What I would do is, scrap the whole concept of the healer role and replace it with the support role. The support role could be anything from a melee, to physical ranged or caster and would be a DPS/heal hybrid. DNC would perfectly fit that role already (with a few tweaks).

This has two big pros:
1. You can give the support role a full DPS rotation,which either buffs the group or debuffs enemies and give them 2-3 heals.
2. You can make tanks have an identity besides "blue DPS"!
Make them be responsible for their own survivability, f.e. by giving them active mitigation they have to keep track of while tanking and give them the tools to keep themselves alive.
The group dmgreduce CD also already fits into that concept.

This is what they could do:
SCH
Debuffs enemies.
Gives out heals/small shields through the fairy (on a CD).

AST
The SCH/WHM hybrid.
Rework the card system to either hand out buffs or debuff enemies (diurnal/nocturnal).
Make each card unique again!
Draws could be achieved by completing their DPS rotation.

WHM
Buffs the group with white magic.

This is in line with how I envisage healers too. Scholar had debuffs in 2.0 and I used to work them in. And nerf SCH’s healing, let mitigation be more at the forefront. Party buffs would work with the WHM identity and they should keep them healiest . I don’t play enough AST to know what it needs, but versatility does sound like its thing. It can do more and adapt. I think maybe in the healing respect it can mix shields and heals more, but not be as effective as either, but it’d have more heal power than a SCH or more shield power than a WHM. So the advantage is mixing the two, rather than specialising. Which I think works with the original design of AST, but something to build on it.

[xxvaynxx]

AST didn't lose any dots. WHM lost one dot. SCH lost too much.

AST is mad because cards are being dumbed down to the point where it feels like their identity is being taken away. (If you actually paid attention in the AST quest line, it talks about what the cards reference and why they do what they do, someone made a great post about it somewhere in the dumpster fire that is healer forums over the past week. I will not be going to find it.)

WHM is mad because we got 1 dot taken away so we now have the boring AST rotation but without anything else for us to do. And we still don't have any raid utility at all. And all of our over the top healing (of which we got more) isn't needed and still won't be needed.

SCH is mad because they lost too much (way more than one dot), and while they got a new shiny fairy, it does not fix losing too much.


To whoever it was trying to talk about how we're gaining 10% potency...
And of course healers have bigger potency spells so it's probable that at least AST and WHM will do more dmg than we currently do, but the HP for all the mobs will also go up quite a bit if Shadowbringers is like previous expansions. My undergeared WHM couldn't really kill anything in HW launch (even though I could kill 50s in ARR areas ok). My well geared WHM took much too long to kill things in Fringes and Peaks (even though I had no problems with 60s in the HW areas). I expect this to be much the same in Shadowbringers, and I for one would have loved to be able to keep any extra damage spells to be able to help kill things faster. (And that's why I'll be going DPS this expansion.)

But most astro's just fish for balance anyway though.

Every other card is kinda useless and not really needed. Astro was basically redraw and royal road until you get balance, don't try to deny that.
All the other cards were just fluff, bole is not helpful, spear is w/e, arrow nobody likes that but samurai and blm but they rather have balance, nobody likes spire, ewer is ok but again, not really needed and from what I seen all the statics I been in with an astro, they almost never use that, its very situational because they only use it if the other healer died.

I get the other cards were still fun to play around with but nobody really cares about the other cards but people that just want variety for the sake of variety. Your I identity is still there, you use cards to buff people and get seals to use a powerful heal or something.
I get your upset and other people as well but people here need to stop acting like the other cards besides balance was useful.

[WaxSw]

Maybe Because I'm not a healer but like... All you had was just two dots and one spamable attack. Sch had like 4 I think? I don't really see the big deal, all you lost was one extra dot.
You still going to be spamming one skill.
Sch had energy drain but like that's not much.

As main scholar I can tell you that only loosing energy drain is a BIG loss, that attack helped the MP management (Sch has the most expensive spells), it helped to burn aetherflow stacks and allowed us gain fairy gauge without need to overheal being also the only reason why people ever used dissipation, loosing it is a big deal, also reduce those dots from 4 (miasma bio shadowflare and miasma 2) to 1 (biolysis) its removing part of Sch's micro management which made the job fun, we also lost a lot of aoe dps tools with bane besides right now scholar is not just spam broil and forget, We use broil a lot, is our filler spell, but while doing it we are managing our dots, seeing if we can use aetherflow offensively or if we have to save it for heals (Risk/reward mechanic) and keeping some sort of rotation. Shb Sch? Yeah thats one spammy boi, Sb Sch? Had a lot of more things than only spam the nuke.