The Healer Double Standard

[Deceptus]

Now, one thing I see, which I think is related to the double standart issue, is that people seem to be misinterpreting the issue; Healers don't want to DPS. The issue with healers was never about doing DPS, the removal of the DPS skill themselves isn't the problem, because then, why is AST and WHM complaining too? Their DPS skill are just the same as before. No, the problem is that healer classes have been striped of half of their kit, while WHM hasn't gained any. With this I mean what they did when soloing or when there was downtime. Is not that Healers want to be "green DPS", is that DPS was the way we contribute to the party, how we excel at our jobs by both keeping the party alive while contributing as much as possible. In the AST case, it wasn't so much DPSing as it was buffing. WHM was considered by many the "entry" healer class because its heals were powerful, but lacked any extra mechanic to worry about. SCH was the one which had the most interesting DPS rotation, wich was still quite simple, yet it interacted with our healing skills (using ED to fill the Fairy gauge and dump Aetherflow to avoid wasting it while helping conserving MP). I think this twisting of what the healer issues hurts the discussion quite a bit.

DPS is the end all metric because there is no way to effectively gauge HPS other than everyone is alive and the encounter is done. In fact, overhealing is generally considered a bad thing because your GCD's would be better spent elsewhere. And the only other place to spend them as a healer is on DPS. If the developers gave us more mitigation that would be awesome.

Make Protect a short term defensive CD. Turn Apocatastasis into Shell, give it to the healers, and make it a magic defensive CD. Remove everyone's self heals so healers actually have something to do. Ramp up the enemy damage a bit (but not too much or casuals will scream).

One of the main reasons I made this thread was very simple:

If tanks had a 1-2 combo for massive enmity (from level 2 to level 80), an AOE, and nothing but Defensive CD's (not offensive CD's) they'd be rioting. This is the exact situation healers will find themselves in come shadowbringers.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

Now, one thing I see, which I think is related to the double standard issue, is that people seem to be misinterpreting the issue; Healers don't want to DPS.

One of my standout moments as a healer was 3.1, helping PUG's with Thordan EX. The dragoon jumps would come up, along with the double tank busters, and I would actually pop Presence of Mind not to DPS but to HEAL as people were slightly mis-positioned or not using enough cooldowns. Health bars would spike down and then immediately up in rapid succession as I precasted heals at a speed that could be backed by a Super Eurobeat soundtrack. It felt glorious.

Those moments are rare in FF14 though, and are most common when your compatriots are making errors (and just carrying people's misplays gets old after the glow of determining life and death wears out).

I DO want to DPS too though. I'd like support spells/buffs and debuffs too. I'd honestly like a lily system were Lily Heals build into Lily DPS tools (Quake, Tornado, Flood), which build into Afflatus Misery. Find where to heal so I can open up my nukes, which could even carry some type of raid support. I would NOT mind WHM being the BIG NUMBERS healer. Throw big heals, throw big rocks. Give us the minimum raid support needed and let AST and SCH be the subtle ones. It actually fits late-game WHM's class fantasy in older games, where Holy made WHM not unlike a wrathful god.

But Square Enix only seems to want to give me the healing tools, not give me the support ones, and is taking the DPS ones away piece by piece. In return, encounter design doesn't change to make those healing tools useful. As content is outgeared, more and more time is spent throwing a regen up and then mashing one button to fill time. Or worse, if healer damage is truly razed to the ground or MP can't support it, doing NOTHING while waiting between sparse heals.

This doesn't just apply to healer imo. I really, really want to see the crowd control tools on my Black Mage and Bard be more than incredibly niche optional play lines in old content.

[Knoahl]

I think I clearly articulated what I thought was a double standard and instead of arguing against my positions, you post this tripe.

Everything you post across the various topics has no real value other than "No because reasons without actually listing anything".

lmao they cannot read it appears, love the quote about the pigeon, made me giggle.

I'm just going to sit here rolling my eyes when future live letters are like "Oh we didn't expect this to happen, we will fix it" as always. It's going to take some magic to change how healing works in a way the casuals won't cry. I mean remember when they nerfed the level 10 or so story quest because it asked you to bring an antidote against the void sent xD

whenever somethings been remotely pressuring, like vault etc or steps of faith (which wasn't hard anyways), people would end up complaining about it. not one casual fight doesn't allow for dps.... I can't speak for ultimate as I havn't really raided in Stormblood past O1s-O4s.

[Yuyuka3]

lmao they cannot read it appears, love the quote about the pigeon, made me giggle.

I'm just going to sit here rolling my eyes when future live letters are like "Oh we didn't expect this to happen, we will fix it" as always. It's going to take some magic to change how healing works in a way the casuals won't cry. I mean remember when they nerfed the level 10 or so story quest because it asked you to bring an antidote against the void sent xD

whenever somethings been remotely pressuring, like vault etc or steps of faith (which wasn't hard anyways), people would end up complaining about it. not one casual fight doesn't allow for dps.... I can't speak for ultimate as I havn't really raided in Stormblood past O1s-O4s.

Yeeeaaaaah, got to love this "oh, we didn't see that coming despite our players being able to do so from the other side of the planet!"-bullsh*it... one would think they should learn after a few times, right? But no...
I did need a few tries to clear Steps (still did it day 1, though, so whatever), but not because it was too hard. It took that long because people were just too stupid to understand what they needed to do. So yeah, agree with you 100%.
Though I cannot remember the Vault being hard at all o.o
There was some damage going out, sure, but it really wasn't hard if you remembered the basics of this game, aka "don't stand in sh*t" and such. People s*ck more than I thought if they found the Vault hard...

[Ilenya]

There was some damage going out, sure, but it really wasn't hard if you remembered the basics of this game, aka "don't stand in sh*t" and such. People s*ck more than I thought if they found the Vault hard...

That's why the Vault was hard. If people didn't bother doing mechanics, the healer had to work overtime to keep people up...And people did a terrible job with the mechanics.

[ADVSS]

It really is hilarious how people grasp at straws in comparison to tanks and healers that they are the same kind of thing to attempt to justify their complaints. This is nothing new however, this has gone on since 2.0 days.

Dislike healer changes? Sure. Saying this is like a tank removing DPS and making it more enmity based is laughable.

I too was a PLD main at the start of 2.0

[Atlantasia]

lmao they cannot read it appears, love the quote about the pigeon, made me giggle.

I'm just going to sit here rolling my eyes when future live letters are like "Oh we didn't expect this to happen, we will fix it" as always. It's going to take some magic to change how healing works in a way the casuals won't cry. I mean remember when they nerfed the level 10 or so story quest because it asked you to bring an antidote against the void sent xD

whenever somethings been remotely pressuring, like vault etc or steps of faith (which wasn't hard anyways), people would end up complaining about it. not one casual fight doesn't allow for dps.... I can't speak for ultimate as I havn't really raided in Stormblood past O1s-O4s.

I've done both Ultimates in prog and and cleared every Savage they've had in SB while relevant, as long as my healing partner was on par with me there was plenty of downtime to DPS. None of the content currently is so difficult to heal, even in prog, that you cannot DPS unless your party is just awful all around (which is rare).

[Deceptus]

Stuff like this is why so many players think that the developers are absolutely disconnected from the player base and have no idea what they're doing or have poor team communication. It's not the first time Yoshi's been caught flat footed on what his team does.

Yoshi-P on Red Mages (2 part GIF):



Meanwhile on Scholar

[Nerfworthy]

Stuff like this is why so many players think that the developers are absolutely disconnected from the player base and have no idea what they're doing or have poor team communication. It's not the first time Yoshi's been caught flat footed on what his team does.

Yoshi-P on Red Mages (2 part GIF):



Meanwhile on Scholar

OML, I wish I could turn this into my signature. It's too perfect.

Edit: I was able to fit half :') Make SCH great again!

[fantasticm]

Make SCH great again!

Even after getting mugged in a back alley they're still the best healer in the game. And you can rest assured SE will buff them back to The Undisputed King, The Merciful God of Jobs to End All Jobs before 5.1 is even a thought in our minds.