The Healer Double Standard

[Haxaan]

On the topic of DPS for healers, the only healer who is getting a DPS nerf is SCH. AST has had 3 dps options since inception. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why SCH are mad about the skill pruning but WHM and AST have pretty much had a Brain Dead DPS rotation since the beginning. My biggest gripe with the Healer changes is that instead of fixing WHM to make it hold it's own against SCH and AST in the utility arena, they dumbed down the other two to be on level footing with WHM which strips down a lot of the uniqueness of the other two jobs. At this point we have 1 healer with 3 different flavors of animation which I am not ok with. They have all but deleted any semblance of Time Mage that AST had, and turned SCH into a WHM with a Pet. I can kind of understand what they did to the card system, even if I don't agree with it, but making both fairies the same exact thing but different skins is kind of silly. If Selene was useless then change her and make her interesting. I dunno, I'm still interested enough to give them all a play through, but I am very disappointed in what I've seen so far. The only positive thing I've seen so far is that the animations are pretty.

[Deceptus]

They have all but deleted any semblance of Time Mage that AST had, and turned SCH into a WHM with a Pet. .

Just prepping everyone for the new healer: Time Mage! /s

[Atlantasia]

The most interesting DPS rotation WHM had was back in HW to be honest (not talking grouped up mobs in dungeons with Holy). When you had Aero III, Aero II, Stone III, Assize and Fluid Aura. That rotation wasn't the best in the world, but it did give you something to do and damage to weave in. Then SB removed the damage on Fluid Aura, making it worthless to the rotation... and then in ShB we lose Aero III and the Black Lily skill is neutral at best because the GCD heals required to access it aren't exactly great unless you're on the move in a fight and need to heal. Which is already achieved with SC Medica II... so yes, WHM's DPS did get nerfed too, it didn't get nerfed as bad as SCH, but it's still meh. I hate DPSing on AST currently, always have and I frankly do not want my main, my WHM to be like that too. :/

Back in ARR by the way, healers did not DPS nearly as much as now, the fights were pretty engaging, and there was downtime to be had, however use of DPS skills depleted MP and the abilities to gain back MP were not there to the extent they are now, so even with spamming MP potions and stacking Piety which was a thing back then, the MP pools were not enough to allow steady constant DPSing on healers. WHM might have gotten a few Aero IIs on things and ScH got their DoT's off and maybe some ruins, at the time they had more MP management than WHM though. DPSing heavily was not expected though because of the constraint to MP.

[Deceptus]

The most interesting DPS rotation WHM had was back in HW to be honest (not talking grouped up mobs in dungeons with Holy). When you had Aero III, Aero II, Stone III, Assize and Fluid Aura. That rotation wasn't the best in the world, but it did give you something to do and damage to weave in. Then SB removed the damage on Fluid Aura, making it worthless to the rotation... and then in ShB we lose Aero III and the Black Lily skill is neutral at best because the GCD heals required to access it aren't exactly great unless you're on the move in a fight and need to heal. Which is already achieved with SC Medica II... so yes, WHM's DPS did get nerfed too, it didn't get nerfed as bad as SCH, but it's still meh. I hate DPSing on AST currently, always have and I frankly do not want my main, my WHM to be like that too. :/

Back in ARR by the way, healers did not DPS nearly as much as now, the fights were pretty engaging, and there was downtime to be had, however use of DPS skills depleted MP and the abilities to gain back MP were not there to the extent they are now, so even with spamming MP potions and stacking Piety which was a thing back then, the MP pools were not enough to allow steady constant DPSing on healers. WHM might have gotten a few Aero IIs on things and ScH got their DoT's off and maybe some ruins, at the time they had more MP management than WHM though. DPSing heavily was not expected though because of the constraint to MP.

In ARR SCH had Aero as a cross class and blizz 2 as well if they wanted some extra aoe.

But just like WHM, SE decided that skillful and optimal play shouldn't be rewarded.

[Atlantasia]

In ARR SCH had Aero as a cross class and blizz 2 as well if they wanted some extra aoe.

But just like WHM, SE decided that skillful and optimal play shouldn't be rewarded.

True enough, it's been so long I forgot about that. ._. I want skillful play to be rewarded... *sigh*

[Semirhage]

With regards to "what are you complaining about, your rotation has always been boring!": Yes. It has. I have tolerated it being boring because I foolishly listened when I was told that the fun was "coming". That I'd get something good "eventually". I don't believe that anymore. I'm not switching mains because my job is changing for the worse, I'm switching because my patience has run out waiting for something good.

[MizArai]

With regards to "what are you complaining about, your rotation has always been boring!": Yes. It has. I have tolerated it being boring because I foolishly listened when I was told that the fun was "coming". That I'd get something good "eventually". I don't believe that anymore. I'm not switching mains because my job is changing for the worse, I'm switching because my patience has run out waiting for something good.

My BF keeps trying to convince me to keep playing WHM, so he'll have a healer while he's leveling up Gunbreaker. "You kept playing in Stormblood, even though you didn't like the changes then." Yeah, I did. I was stupid. Yeah, it will still be playable in Shadowbringers. Yeah, it's not getting everything stripped from it this time around. (How much more could they actually take??? They were so desperate they actually took Repose as a role action this time.) But by this point, I think the only way SE will get the clue about how we players feel is not only vocalizing on the forums, but also by showing with the numbers of people no longer playing healers. Hello Trust System. I'd like to sign up for an instant DPS queue.

[mishell_]

Thanks for writing this out and I agree as well. I don't understand why there is such a double-standard for healers in this game, almost to the point of outright hostility that healers want to do something other than heal. There are many people who don't play WHM, SCH, AST who maybe had one experience with a DPS-happy healer who probably didn't raise them after their fifth time dying to a telegraphed AoE and have this festering ire for DPSing healers since. But I'm mostly disappointed with Yoshi-P's statement that SCH has to be curbed because of unfair healing output/forcing an off/onhealer situation. There hasn't been an off-on healer dichotomy in any raid group for a very long time, and it seems even more concerning considering that SCH will usually be using their Aetherflow healing options first, other than AST's star.

I had some hope when I initially read the Mr. Happy interview with Yoshi-P where he admitted the shield/pure healer dichotomy wasn't working but now I feel like it's better to stick with the devil we know rather than the devil they're trying to sell to us now. Can we consider how ridiculous it is that SCH will be the only job in the game that can't use it's starting class's toolkit? One will be able to use Miasma as ACN but it will be made magically unavailable to SCH once they equip the job stone. That's just awful. There truly seems like there was no compassion, thought, or creativity put into the healer changes.

[Kabooa]

Go go Smite Healers.

[Brightamethyst]

The real question about healer DPS has always been, and still remains: What else do they expect us to do during downtime?

Most people don't want DPS options for the sake of having big numbers, but because there's literally nothing else to do most of the time. Healing is so powerful that you spend the vast majority of any given dungeon or trial not healing. People want more DPS options because the alternative is pressing 2 buttons over and over for 80% of a dungeon. The removal and/or simplification of DPS would be fine if it was going to be replaced with something else (support abilities, harder dungeons the need more healing in the first place, etc), but they're not. The devs have created a huge void with no apparent plans to fill it with something else.